New York Songlines: West Broadway

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Washington Square Park

Originally a marsh surrounding Minetta Brook, in the early years of New York this area was used as a graveyard for slaves and yellow fever victims, a dueling ground and a place of execution. In 1826 it was designated the Washington Military Parade Grounds, which soon was transformed into a public park.

Washington Square was at one point the center of New York society, later becoming the unofficial quadrangle of NYU. It's long been a haven for folksingers (including Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan); in 1961, a police crackdown on folksinging led to riots.

This is the park where Jane Fonda wanted to be Barefoot in the Park; it's also where the skateboarders beat up a passer-by in Kids. (The real-life skate kids are harmless.)

Designed by Stanford White, the arch was put up in 1892 to replace a temporary plaster arch erected in 1889 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Washington's inauguration. In 1917, members of the bohemian Liberal Club, including artists Marcel Duchamp and John Sloane, climbed on top of the arch to proclaim the Independent Republic of Greenwich Village. Harold Lloyd drives a horse-drawn trolley through the arch in the silent movie Speedy.

In the late 1950s the city planned to extend 5th Avenue through the arch, cutting the park in half. Neighborhood residents, including Eleanor Roosevelt, rallied to block this horrible idea. In the early 21st Century, the park underwent a controversial renovation that, among other things, centered the park's fountain so it can be seen through the arch from Fifth Avenue.

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Kimmel Center for University Life

566-576 (block): This glass-roofed NYU student center "borders on the grotesque," according to the AIA Guide. Built in 2001, it replaced the 1959 Loeb Student Center, which served as the command center for the NYU student strike that followed Nixon's 1970 invasion of Cambodia.

Loeb in turn was built on the site of Katharine Branchard's House of Genius, a boardinghouse whose tenants are said to have included virtually every Village literary figure--the ones who actually lived here were Frank Norris and Allan Seeger. At what was No. 60, novelist Willa Cather lived in 1906-08, where she met her life partner Edith Lewis; here also Robert W. Chambers wrote The King in Yellow, a series of very disturbing short stories. At No. 63, British occultist Aleister Crowley lived and painted at a studio that used to be here in 1918-19.

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Bobst Library

Block (70 Washington Square South): NYU's main library, built in 1972 to a Philip Johnson design; at the time, the plan was to redo all of NYU in this red sandstone look. Named for Nixon supporter, anti-Semite and child molester Elmer Holmes Bobst; a corrupt contribution from Bobst to Nixon is supposedly responsible for the selection of Spiro Agnew as Nixon's running mate.

Lili Taylor studied here in The Addiction. At least two real-life NYU students have committed suicide by leaping down the central atrium. If you want to go inside, tell the guard that you're going to the Tamiment Labor Library on the 10th floor, which unlike the rest of the library is open to the public.

The southeast corner of the library is the site of Open Door, where jazz legends like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis played.

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552 (corner): Village Stationery

548: TRE Giovani, pizza

546: Marumi, Japanese

542: Olga's Nails gives the best pussy wax in town, according to the Village Voice.

540: Purdy Girl. David Crosby and Graham Nash are said to have lived in this building, as well as Bob Dylan.

Center for Architecture

536: A space dedicated to public discussion of New York City architecture -- opened by the American Institute of Architecture's New York chapter.

534:Philip Williams Posters

530:NYU's Professional Bookstore/Business and Law

Corner: At this corner was the office of "The Repairer of Reputations" in the uncanny Robert W. Chambers story of the same name.

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Washington Square Village

561 (corner): Construction of this behemoth NYU housing project in 1956-58 helped inspire the architectural preservation movement. Includes NYU's Office for International Students & Scholars.

In front of a rather suburban looking strip of restaurants is a statue of the street's namesake in midstride.

547: NYU's Wolf Center

545: Washington Square Wines

543: Coffee Cuisine Corporation

541: Satay

539: Ennio & Michael Ristorante

535: Society, pricey outdoors bar; Pita Cuisine of Soho

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Corner (142 Bleecker): Senor Swanky's, schlocky restaurant

510: Luxus cafe

506: Bruno Bakery, a sibling of Pasticceria Bruno on Bleecker.

504: Aglio Restaurant

496: Okinawa Japanese Restaurant; Wares for Art Gallery, featuring outsider art, including UFO themes. Coincidentally, author/abductee Whitley Streiber is said to have lived in this building.

490 (corner): Silver Spurs Restaurant, Texas-themed burger joint

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Corner: Associated Supermarkets/Morton Williams. Note Bohemorama, a mural by Vicki Khuzami (2001) capturing 200 years of Village counter-culture.

Silver Towers

505: Designed by modernist architect I.M. Pei, 1966. Originally called University Village, the building on LaGuardia is now a co-op.

Check out Bust of Sylvette in the center of the complex, a monumental cubist Picasso sculpture (1970). Most cities would make a bigger deal out of having a colossal Picasso.

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468: The AIA Guide praises this 1890s loft building's "magnificent maroon arches."

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475 (corner): Nello, the SoHo branch of a pricey Upper East Side Northern Italian. Was Amici Miei, noted for its stylized horse sculpture.

463: I Tre Merli, Italian in a soaring loft space lined with thousands of bottles.

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436: Vilebrequin, French swimwear shop in one-story building that "feels like a doorway to the South of France."

430-434: Glitzy 1988 shops; includes D&G, Dolce & Gabbana's "affordable" line.

426: Exposed girders would seem to make this 1870s building ahead of its time.

420: Gallery building c. 1890

410: Ad Hoc Softwares; not computer programs, but beauty products, housewares etc.

408 (corner):

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435: French Connection

429-431: 1872 loft has a cast-iron facade.

427: Another cast-iron building.

Corner (157 Spring): Sunglass Hut is in a c. 1900 building.

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402 (corner): Origins, flagship store of PC beauty products chain. In a five-story brick building, c. 1900.

398: Barolo, pricey Italian noted for its garden and huge wine list.

392-394: Early cast-iron building dates to 1850s.

386-388: Cast-iron facades

382: This blue building houses Hotel Venus, Patricia Fields' bigger, more fabulous Soho branch. Above is Dom, eccentric housewares.

380: Cast-iron lofts c. 1870

376: Cipiani Downtown; the Sex and the City group drinks bellini here.

Corner (506 Broome): This three-story building was built in 2001 to house the flagship store for Tommy Hilfiger.

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Dia Center for the Arts

393: This annex of the Chelsea-based museum features Walter De Maria's Broken Kilometer, a careful arrangement of 500 two-meter brass rods, on permanent view since 1979.

383: Bears the number 159, a relic of the years when this street was called South 5th Avenue--and its numbers counted down to Washington Square.

379: Polo Sport; Ralph Lauren for the masses.

375: Anthropologie; chain of stuff from around the world.

Corner (500 Broome): Originally a pepper factory built in 1876, this cast-iron building underwent a loving renovation in the 1990s. Dominico Vacca, men's fashion, is on the ground floor.

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W <===         WATTS ST

366 (corner): Oliver Peoples, designer eyewear

340 (corner): Felix, Parisian-style bistro

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363 (corner): Kenn's Broome Street Bar; cozy neighborhood beer-and-burger joint is in a c. 1825 Federal townhouse.

359: Cupping Room Cafe, since 1977 a popular Soho hangout.

357: Another Federal house dating to the 1820s.

351: What Goes Around Comes Around, "the best vintage clothing store in Soho"--Eve Claxton.

349: Ideya, happening Latin bar/restaurant

343: Novecento, Argentine bistro with a chill lounge upstairs.

341: Diva, bar for late-nighters

337A (corner): Namaskaar, affordable, tasty Indian

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310: SoHo Grand Hotel, ultra-stylish hotel for the Beautiful People. Includes the equally ritzy Canal House restaurant and Grand Bar & Lounge. Earlier on this site was the Roman Catholic Church of St. Alphonsus Liguori, a German immigrant congregation established in 1847 that completed a Lombard Romanesque church, designed by Francis G. Hempler, here in 1872. In 1914, IWW leader Frank Tannenbaum was arrested here along with 189 others for leading this "army" into the church in search of food and shelter; later that year, a bomb exploded outside this church at the same time that someone set off a similar bomb outside St. Patrick's Cathedral. In 1980, the church subsided into an old stream bed and was torn down.

300 (corner): Scrap Yard, a store devoted to graffiti tools and culture

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323: SoHo: 323 nightclub was Chez Bernard, French bistro

307: 1893 lofts

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Corner (386 Canal): Mega Photo & Electronics was Canal Sound City

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LISPENARD ST   ===> E

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American Thread Building

260 (corner): Built in 1894-96 in Renaissance Revival style by William B. Tubby. It was originally the New York Wool Exchange, an attempt by the New York Wool Warehouse Company to wrest the wool trade away from Boston. The venture failed in 1898, and from 1901-1964 this was a factory for the American Thread Company, whose name is still on the building.

Keith Haring painted a mural here in 1979, when it was some kind of exhibition space; the mural was forgotten and rediscovered in 2008 when the top floor were being transformed into a spectacular triplex. Supermodel Naomi Campbell is said to have lived in the building.

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Tribeca Park

Once part of the Lispenard Meadows, this area was made a park in 1810, when the city purchased it for $3,950. Long known as the Beach Street Park, it got its present name in 1985.

The street grid gets a little confusing here-- Tribeca Park is really in the path of West Broadway, but the street sort of bends around the park. Anyway, it's easier to depict it this way for Songlines purposes.

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W <===         N MOORE ST

Corner (218-224 W Broadway): A grand 1881 red brick building by George W. Da Cunha, architect of the Gramercy Hotel.

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Corner (1 Walker): Tribeca Park Gourmet

249: anotheroom

247: Tribeca Tavern

245: Dergah Nur Ashki Jerrahi--Sufi Order Masjid al-Farah

241-243: Cercle Rouge

235 (corner): Little old building

WHITE ST         ===> E

229 (corner): Columbine

227: Sufi Books, interesting bookstore on the mystical branch of Islam and other esoteric traditions

225: In 1979, a club opened here called Tier 3--better known as TR3--that was a showcase for New Wave and No Wave bands like DNA, 8-Eyed Spy, The Raincoats, Slits, Lounge Lizards and Bush Tetras.

221: Churrascaria Plataforma, all-you-can-eat Brazilian

219: Was El Teddy's, which opened as a German restaurant in the 1920s, became a steakhouse in the 1940s patronized by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and was reincarnated in 1985 as a hip Mexican called El Internacional. In 1989 it became El Teddy's, a local art-scene hangout with a design scheme that was described as "Gaudiesque." It was perhaps best known for a 2,500-pound replica of the Statue of Liberty's crown on the roof-- featured for a while in Saturday Night Live. Closed in 2004, demolished in 2005.

211 (corner): VinoVino, wine bar and wine shop in one--so you can sample before you buy. Formerly Water Moon.

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Finn Square

A triangle (like most Manhattan ''squares'') created in 1919 and named for Philip Schuyler Finn, a World War I soldier who fought and died in 1918 with the 69th Regiment, the "Fighting Irish." He was the son of Tammany Hall leader "Battery" Dan Finn (1845-1910), who got his nickname preserving Battery Park from encroachment by commercial piers. As a police magistrate, Finn was known for dispensing picturesque advice rather than harsh sentences. He was remembered as an advocate for the weak and oppressed.

Finn's square was just a weed-filled traffic island until 1998, when it got an attractive makeover via the Greenstreets program.

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Odeon

145 (corner): A French brasserie with Art Deco style, this bar/ restaurant helped make Tribeca the fashionable neighborhood it is to day-- originally attracting art scene heavyweights like Warhol and Basquiat. It introduced the Cosmopolitan in the early 1980s. The exterior was featured on the cover of Bright Lights, Big City.

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Corner (125 Chambers): Cosmopolitan Hotel is a relatively affordable Manhattan lodging choice. Edward McWilliams, former Jersey City police chief and for 20 years a house detective at the Astor House hotel, killed himself here in 1900. Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is on the ground floor.

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109 (corner): This Italianate building dates to 1860; in the World War I era it housed Vogric's Cafe. The Delphi Restaurant served Greek food here from 1970 until 2007; it's supposed to be turned into Brushstroke, a Japanese addition to the David Bouley empire.

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30 (corner): Borough of Manhattan Community College's Fiterman Hall was given to the school in 1993, in what was then the largest donation ever made to a community college. Irreparably contaminated in the September 11 attacks, it took at least eight years to demolish.

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7 WTC Park

Block: A triangular park that opened in 2006, at the same time as the completion of 7 WTC. Includes Jeff Koons' Balloon Flower.

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Federal Office Building

Block (90 Church):

Built 1935 in a mixture of Classical and Art Deco. The building, with more than a million square feet of space, is owned by the Postal Service, which uses it as the major mail sorting facility for Lower Manhattan. It also houses the New York City Housing Authority and the Legal Aid Society.