The Bowery Boys episode 480, creating the West Village.

Hey, it's the Bowery Boys.

Hey.

Hi there, welcome to the Bowery Boys. This is Greg Young.

And this is Tom Myers, and today we're going to get lost, or at least a little geographically challenged in one of our favorite places to get turned around in Manhattan.

We're talking about the West Village. It is an impossibly charming neighborhood of historic homes and irregular blocks, beloved taverns,

and quite a few mysteries.

Now, the West Village is both one of New York's oldest neighborhoods, okay, so with roots going back

to the Dutch and English colonial days,

very old, but also in another way, it's a somewhat new neighborhood.

New or maybe you mean trendy, because the West Village has been trendy for a number of decades.

Millions of non-New Yorkers know the streets of this neighborhood if they are

fans of the TV show, Sex and the City. Because Sarah Jessica Barker's character,

Kerry Bradshaw, may have lived on the Upper East side on the show, but in reality,

they filmed the exterior of the row house at 66 Perry Street in the West Village.

So it has been trendy since the 1990s and known for its coffee shops and trendy brunch places.

Is that what you mean?

Not quite, actually.

So the West Village, okay, quotes, the West Village, as hinted in its name, is west of, or rather, the western section of Greenwich Village, which is the sprawling district with Washington Square Park as its centerpiece. So in that respect, it does trace back to the Dutch settlers, such as old

Wutter van Twiller and that lot, and to the distant world of old burial grounds and forgotten

creeks, but as a distinct neighborhood, okay, as something we call quote unquote West Village,

it's only been around or rather known as that,

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