New York's West Village is Off the Grid: A Tour

ah hello didn't see you there well i'm just hanging out here uh saint luke's place in the west village which is where we're gonna be doing a tour today yeah the west village is kind of greenwich village it's we'll get in all that but uh really pretty part here on the west side of downtown manhattan uh before we start do me a favor check out the patreon it's a huge help uh got some extras on there helped fund these things also too like the video give us a little thumbs up a little thumbs up that's always helpful and uh subscribe you know i've been about to dump a lot of information on you so uh subscribe to the video that'd be great uh uh all right well we're gonna start here in a second uh stewie how are you doing doing good doing good what's new stewie just uh you know walking around enjoying this good new york weather before that winter kicks in yes we got a beautiful day here so it's gonna be a nice walk um i don't know i guess i guess that's uh pretty much it what do you think should we start this thing let's do it love the enthusiasm baby love it let's go so we're walking right now next to st luke's place st luke's place made famous by the tv show uh the cosby show uh where it was like the exterior of the place where he lived uh you guys ever heard of bill cosby rest in peace he's not dead but he might as well be here is also too where a lot of uh famous people this so this park here is called the james j walker park jimmy walker who was actually the mayor of new york in the late 20s early 30s he actually ended up resigning in 1932 because of uh corruption go figure but they called him like the he was like the cool guy mayor he was like you go to boxing matches slick this hair go into speakeasies and stuff he used to have a really funny quote he said he'd rather be a lamp post on fifth avenue than the mayor of chicago uh pretty cool i can get i can get with that uh so that's all saying luke's place behind me you can see all that there all the people there see that guy out there hey what's up man how you doing all right let's keep moving so the west village by the way is a little bit uh different distinct from greenwich village so greenwich village is the oldest of all the villages east village all that stuff you can check in my grinch village video you know but greenwich village has its name rooted in the early 1700s but it was still a dutch colony i'm sorry british colony sorry named after greenwich greenwich london greenwich median time you guys know that ah granite medium time time zones but later on um different neighborhoods started to get kind of their own vibe east village gave itself the name in the 1950s and 60s when artists started moving in there it used to just be an extension of the lower east side and then it kind of pinned itself to the reputation of greenwich village because of all the artists and stuff who actually left here to live there then around that same time you had the west village kind of doing the same thing now what's really considered west village i mean look different people are going to have different definitions of this so chill out in the comments are you going to start typing away all your warriors relax okay there's different they're different definitions for these things i tend to think of the west village as west of 7th avenue which is where we are right now now seventh avenue by the way wasn't actually an original part of this part of seventh avenue at least wasn't an original part of the grid of 1811 right the avenues which go north south started at first seven in the east go to 12th avenue in the west the streets was going east to west start at first street just north of houston go all the way to the 200s at the north end i've talked about this in every damn video we've done but this actually wasn't here when the grid was implemented because this was all an exception to the grid which starts down at houston street just to the south the reason it was an exception and the streets have names here even though we're north of houston is because if you want to get me on this side here so you see all this is because uh people already mapped out their streets here you had lots of very wealthy people who were like yeah no thanks don't want to deal with that so they left it and it was still kind of an isolated village because there was no 7th avenue here it was until later actually in the 1900s at 7th avenue was finally rammed through here oh over here too this is pretty cool you can see it from here this is a little locksmith so that little locksmith was actually uh opened in 1980 by a guy named philip mortalaro pretty cool actually um it's actually the smallest freestanding building in new york or one of them at least it's got its own like you know building number and lot number but it's interesting because uh he's been offered like i think a bank it was a couple years ago a bank offered him like three million dollars for that building or two million dollars or something and he turned it down because he said you know what i'm happy now i make a good living with this now what do i need all that for he's like i like coming to work i like my job pretty impressive you might say that locksmith has found the key to life that was pretty good right stewie pretty good thanks man all right we're walking we're walking up bedford here to the left you have here this is a cool little house this little thin house 75 and a half bedford look at that so this was made by filling in the carriage passage for the house right next to it and this was in 1873 in fact uh in the st vincent malay very famous poet and actress back then lived there cary grant and also william steig who uh wrote uh who he is the illustrator who made the picture book for shrek yeah you know the shrek was based on a book though you could tell people that uh shrek the movie isn't as good as the book you'd be that gay so we'll keep walking here so you may notice that it's a little quieter here it's more tranquil more peaceful baby it's quiet you can have that too for just a few million dollars oh we're walking by this house one of the older houses in the neighborhood see all these little federal style houses in the neighborhood you could tell the federal style by the flemish bondwork of the brick you can also see it from the dormers that come out of the roofs roofs roofs roofs roofs help me out here stewie this is cherry lane theater this is pretty cool this used to be um actual like a silo for storing stuff that was usually farmland just like from the early 1800s 1817 was put here um became a brewery a tobacco warehouse and now it's an off-broadway theater anyone who's anyone like you know they had like sam shepard plays he debuted true west there very famous play um you know f scott fitzgerald put plays up pablo picasso put plays up there didn't you know he was a playwright too he probably wasn't very good but you know you know john malkovich uh gary sinise ethan hawk all these crazy actors got their kind of start there so let's keep moving baby come on we got a lot of ground to cover well it's a nice day and we're in these quiet side streets which is nice you can see all the stoops so i was saying this area to kind of separate itself off gave itself a little different vibe of granite from greenwich village because it you know developed its own little personality and also makes it more exclusive neighborhoods like to carve themselves out a little bit to make themselves a little more exclusive and fancy baby so this is kind of a cool story over here to the front you see chumley's so chumley's was a speakeasy that was put there in the 1920s people like f5 scott fitzgerald john steinbeck used to come to this place this is 86 bedford there's another entrance here on barrow street so what would happen was uh when they would raid the place the police would kind of give them a heads up and they would 86 the party they would dump everyone out the back entrance on 86 bedford rather than the front 86. that's a good fact right stewie you're gonna use that one i'm sure next time you're on a date here you son of a gun you can impress your date with that so let's get in the street here so not to deal with these people it's kind of nice that it's not too crowded right now this area is pretty insane actually and you'll see why here in a second you can see all these cool little plays these are all buildings like this used to actually be like a little stable kind of thing you see up there it says j goblin cove 1865 pretty cool all these cool little buildings this is kind of funny this corner building here i won't spend too much time on it because it doesn't interest me that much but this building was the building from the show friends this is monica monica chandler joey and rachel lived in this building this is like the establishing shot at the beginning of all the friends episodes here coming this way kind of crazy and then over there on the left is where ross lived i guess he moved there later on in the show and then here to the corner is one of the older houses in the neighborhood so that house is 1822 uh very fancy it's a wooden house back then it wasn't that fancy but uh you know it's probably worth you know 98 billion dollars now and over here you have the building a better shot of it that's the friends building omg totes cray [Music] friends yay all right show you some other stuff here this is grove court this is pretty cool really pretty little spot here these houses were built so these were built in 1854 and it was until the 1920s that they were actually made kind of nice and like a little court area and all that um but yeah pretty nice little area this used to be for like the workers in the neighborhood you know people like worked at the brewery and stuff like that and today they're very fancy in fact probably creeping everyone over there out right now walking in front of them and here you have some more of the federal style houses you have the original like iron work you have like here where you put your shoes in yeah look at that you wipe your manure off and all your snow and stuff that's what that's for and uh these were built also too in 1820s 1830s so back then this whole area was like there was nothing out here these were built as kind of like a development like you still have in big cities today when you go to a big city you know and it starts growing the outskirts are what kind of get gobbled up and that's what's happening here now we're walking to hudson street now hudson street is kind of the main drag here at least in my opinion of the west village here straight ahead you have st luke in the fields call saint luke in the fields because it's in the fields like in the middle of nowhere 1822 this is put here it's a nice church eventually became one of trinity uh church's chapels uh pretty pretty cool huh trinity church is a huge landowner here by the way huge landowner here in fact when we started at st luke's place that was all trinity church uh property and we walked a lot of this area was you know like the speakeasy we walked by which by the way speakeasies now don't exist speakeasies were unique to prohibition today they still have speakeasies they're called speakeasies but uh that doesn't mean anything except that they're gonna charge you double for a drink that's all so that's saint luke in the fields very pretty church so i was actually named saying luke because st luke was the physician evangelist and remember this whole area was settled by people who were leaving and it was during a time of yellow fever epidemics so you know health was a big thing also clement clarke moore was one of the founders of it colonial clark moore was the guy who wrote a visit from saint nicholas you ever heard of that uh poem stewie you know what you know the poem was a night before christmas yes that was him and he was actually a huge landowner in chelsea which i covered in my chelsea video i'm sick plug but uh he was one of the founders of that so now we're walking north and you start seeing people come out because it's like midday now it's not so bad but a quaint a little area and all these homes so many of these so many of these buildings you know date back to like the 1820s 1830s 1840s which is why this whole area is down zoned by the way which is interesting because one of the things that's happening in new york city right now is a lot of up zoning they're taking neighborhoods like let's say for example williamsburg in 2005 and they're taking these industrial commercial zoned areas or small residential and up zoning them to like high density residential everything so so developers and everything can take advantage and builds huge condos or whatever uh that's the opposite of what's happened in neighborhoods like this because here you already have people with money here and they want to protect their investment they want to protect their neighborhood so the city listens and the city down zones them and actually puts in restrictions where you can't build certain heights where you can't build too big and all that kind of stuff what a concept another thing to keep in mind is that west village is a lot us because it's so nice here a lot of celebs live in this neighborhood jim carrey hugh jackman sarah jessica parker and matthew broderick uh let's see mark zuckerberg just bought a place mark zuckerberg just bought a place for like 25 million right nearby you know the guy who built that platform where you can go check out all your uncles crazy political conspiracy theories he lives here so now we're gonna cross charles street i want to show you guys a pretty cool little house here this is kind of cool we're walking a lot today stewie you feel okay it's quiet it's not as hectic we're not getting yelled at or getting at least not yet so i wanted to show you this house this is really cool this is 121 charles street isn't that crazy this is a house this was moved here this used to be up in the upper east side upper east side and they moved it here in the 1960s uh this thing was moved here and it's they call it the good night moon house because margaret wise brown actually lived here when she wrote that book she's actually from new york she's from uh greenpoint but she lived in this little house when she wrote good night moon which is a like a kid's book it's like where this like little you know bunny says good night to all the things in his room and then finally says good night to the moon great book you know uh it's not you know it's not crime and punishment but you know it's a nice little book to read but a pretty cool little building uh actually moved here on a like a truck interesting it's now worth 125 billion dollars give or take a few keep moving and you can see two here that the street signs are brown you see it says hudson street that means we are in a protected district whenever you see the brown street signs in new york it means you're in a protected district oh there's a bunch of protected districts in new york the landmark preservation commission i've talked about this in the past in fact in the grand central video grand central check it out i talk about how grand central was kind of the reason these things are able to be protected what happened was in 1963 i'll tell you guys the story why not in 1963 penn station was demolished now penn station used to be this gorgeous station designed by mckim mead and white we've talked about stanford white in other videos uh he's the guy who was murdered on top of mata the old madison square garden which he designed by a jealous lover but i digress penn station was demolished because penn central needed money in fact they sold the land madison square garden was built there but when it was demolished people were so pissed off that they uh protest and everything and then later on penn central was going to pretty much do the same thing to grand central people were so angry about pen that they pushed the city to land market the only thing is landmarking wasn't really much of a thing yet so penn central sued the case went all the way to the supreme court united states and they found in favor of a city's ability to protect its landmarks let's go we can make this come on see all these fancy little brunches and stuff i feel like i should just pull up a chair and just sit down with some of these people oh thanks man good day i didn't pay that guy to say that so i had to stop here and tell you guys about this i kind of walked right by because i was busy talking about something else but i'm inserting this because it's that important this is 555 hudson street this is where jane jacobs lived in 1947 she bought this row house and lived here to the 1960s if you don't know who jane jacobs is you got to fix that baby she's one of the most important people in new york city history she was an activist she was a organizer and she fought robert moses one of the most powerful men in new york city history on every crappy thing that he was trying to do to ruin greenwich village and to ruin so she stopped the lower manhattan expressway the lomex from being built across the island through so demolishing that she helped protect washington square from traffic and a highway being put through that she was a hero they should make movies about this woman uh you know instead of all those marvel movies i want to make a movie about you know jane jacobs and i don't know but she's the best so i wanted to stop here 555 hudson street this is where she lived for a very long time got a little plaque here pretty cool all right let's keep going all right so here's another historic place on the left this is white horse tavern looks really fancy now good lord this place used to be like fries and burgers and stuff but it looks like it's gotten good they're gonna make it fancy just got bought actually recently um so that maybe that's why but this has been here since 1880 this is white horse tavern and it was actually like a place where like irish longshore men and people like that used to come because we're right next to the water now is where all the peers and stuff are and they would come and hang out here and you know but it also became very popular for artists because once again i told you this kind of still was greenwich village back in the day didn't become west village until later people like uh let's see uh famously bob dylan jack kerouac used to get bounced from here all the time um but also too is where dylan thomas they say you know drank his 18 shots of whiskey or something like that and he went back to the chelsea hotel where he flipped into a coma and he eventually died i don't know if it was exactly related to the to the actual alcohol that he drank but he died and he drank there oh thank you oh awesome dude i appreciate it take it easy have a good day yeah i don't know i guess uh keep watching keep subscribing like that guy that's a good thing i guess right all right so over here you have bleaker coming up and it meets here you have abingdon square which is named after one of uh sir peter warren's uh i think it was his son-in-law or something and that's up here to the north so peter warren is the guy who owned a lot of this land by the way way back in the day this is back when it was still british and the other side you have bleaker which was anthony bleaker so anthony bleecker uh was the guy who seeded a lot of this land to the city so bleaker street is named after anthony bleaker he was a writer he was actually friends with william cullen bryant and uh washington irving there's renamed that in like the 1820s 1830s now we're working on the cobblestone so this is all from back when this was like a little residential area very quiet this is called bank street they actually had banks on it that's why they called it bank street some of the banks that were leaving the you know the epidemic back in the day would set up shop here and over here to the right you have uh 105 bank street 105 bank street famously uh was bought actually by a guy named joe butler who was the drummer for the loving spoonful the love and spoonful was a band that got popular with like the folk movement they're the guys there the love and spoonful sang the song do you believe in magic and i hope you do [Music] yeah that they sang that so he made some money and he bought this building a little later in the early 70s a very famous couple lived on the top floor and that was john lennon and yoko ono oh but in 1972 someone broke into their apartment and they're like yeah we're not moving here and we're not living here anymore and they moved to the dakota uh in the upper west side on the central park west which is where he eventually died unfortunately he was murdered by mark david chapman lots of pretty houses here all being renovated and stuff yikes gonna be not cheap to live here pretty cool building here and over here to the left you have hb studios you know hb studios yeah it's an acting studio you can learn to act there actor i myself dabbled in acting every now and then you know but people like robert de niro al pacino i mean like you name it they were actors in new york pretty much and bancroft they've all trained here some to some extent and vancrop in case you don't know is the there there she's a woman from the graduate the graduate with dustin hoffman that's the movie i mean people probably still don't know what it is that's the movie where the song uh mrs robinson comes from now he's to you mrs robinson jesus loves you more than you will know nice work stewie and here we're starting to get to the western edge right here you have a lot of construction for one and you have here buildings that show you kind of what the high line used to be the high line is a park i covered that in uh in the meatpacking district and all that stuff but it actually used to be an elevated railway here this building shows you what it used to do used to go under the buildings they used to dump all their stuff that is one of the worst sounds on the planet so this used to be a building that you know housed uh you know had the high line going through it it used to be bell laboratories the building over there you see bell laboratories which is where they filmed uh they filmed movies radio they had all kinds of stuff in fact they filmed um the jazz the jazz singer with al jolson you know the guy who used to do blackface yikes they filmed that there one of the first motion pictures of all time today it is the west beth uh artist housing west beth art is housing because of west street and bethune street west beth so that's over there and now we're just walking to the west we're walking over to the water and that's kind of it pretty much i mean if you go continue north you would eventually get into the meat packing district which i covered in its own video so check that video out um so yeah that's pretty much the west village we got to see some you know pretty streets there's a it's a bigger neighborhood we just did a quick walk all right so relax you're probably thinking but you didn't cover this he didn't cover this i didn't walk down christopher street for example i didn't show you the path station that's been there since like the early 1900s i didn't show you a lot of stuff because you know i'm trying to make keep this video under an hour so relax chill out we're walking out to the west side we're gonna be out on hudson river park we saw the hp studios which was pretty cool i'm gonna walk by that so i will tell you all the famous people who study there wallace shawn studied or produced there you know that is stewie i don't know he's the guy from uh princess bride the guy who goes yeah wallace sean uh worked there inconceivable that guy that was pretty good impression right thanks man so yeah so now we're crossing the west side highway and we're going to end this over on the hudson river you're in graveyard new jersey you see behind me see the world trade center down in lower manhattan this goes all the way up the hudson river park which actually starts down at battery park and goes all the way up the west side up until pretty much 59th street until it starts up again kind of as riverside park a little bit north of that also going up the west side try not to get killed by bikers when you're here bikers are kind of nuts so here you have a nice wheel view of the uh hudson river named after henry hudson the guy who uh discovered you know manhattan in fact in 1524 giovanni de verzano was the first one to kind of come here on behalf of the french but uh he didn't really explore it like henry hudson did so henry hudson's the guy who actually sailed up this whole thing looking for a route to india didn't find it went back to the dutch east india company who hired him told him hey i didn't find a rotini but i found this sick island and they're like yeah yeah that's something we paid you for you're fired but they actually came here and settled it and eventually became new amsterdam by the way henry hudson ended up dying in hudson bay because his uh his crew mutinied against him because they were freezing and they were like dude you're not gonna find this passage so they sent him packing they just they took him off the ship and put him in a boat with his son and just sent him off to die of frost bite and pneumonia or whatever all right well this is a good view there you've got jersey city here you have hoboken go further up you got more of new jersey all that stuff all here but we're pretty much done guys we made it through west village very nice little walk i'm starving so i'm gonna go get some food here in a second it's a beautiful neighborhood like i said it got carved out of of greenwich village still kind some people old school people consider it more greenwich village too i don't know what to tell you i mean different people have different opinions but it's a west village it's fancier it's more expensive it's quieter which is why people live here all right well um i don't know that's pretty much it pretty cool little video i this one had been kind of like an omission we had to cover it's the last kind of uh downtown neighborhood we had to cover stewie what do you think man i get everything i think we got everything good uh all right well i guess i'm gonna go get some food maybe some pizza or something and uh hang out with people all right i'm rambling subscribe please like the video please and check out the patreon please so it keeps us uh eating pizza and god i'm rambling alright i'm done man see y'all later sick

Channel: tomdnyc

Views: 86,660

Keywords: west village tour, greenwich village walking tour, tomdnyc tour, new york city walking tour, nyc walking tour, greenwich village history, tom delgado, tomas delgado, tom delgado new york, tomdnyc, travel guide new york, things to do in new york

Id: Ug_J7lWGfoA

Length: 27min 26sec (1646 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 06 2021