The West Village is a neighborhood in Manhattan in New York City. Largely thought to constitute the western portion of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood within Lower Manhattan, the area is roughly bounded by the Hudson River on the west and Sixth Avenue on the east, extending from West 14th Street south to West Houston Street. The Far West Village extends from the Hudson River to Hudson Street. Bordering neighborhoods are Chelsea to the north, Hudson Square – officially designated in 2009 – and the South Village to the south, and the East Village to the east. The neighborhood is primarily residential, with a multitude of small restaurants, shops, and services. Residential property sale prices in the West Village neighborhood are some of the most expensive in the United States, typically exceeding US$2,000 per square foot ($22,000/m²) in 2016. The neighborhood is distinguished by streets that are “off the grid”, being set at an angle to the other streets in Manhattan. These roads were laid out in an 18th-century grid plan, approximately parallel or perpendicular to the Hudson, long before the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 which created the main street grid plan for later parts of the city. Even streets that were given numbers in the 19th century to make them nominally part of the grid can be idiosyncratic, at best. West 4th Street, formerly Asylum Street, crosses West 10th, 11th and 12th Streets, ending at an intersection with West 13th Street. Heading north on Greenwich Street, West 12th Street is separated by three blocks from Little West 12th Street, which in turn is one block south of West 13th Street. Further, some of the smaller east-west residential streets are paved with setts (often confused with cobblestones), particularly in Far West Village and the Meatpacking District. This grid is prevalent through the rest of Greenwich Village as well. Beginning in the early 1980s, residential development spread in the Far West Village between West and Hudson Streets, from West 14th to West Houston Streets, resulting in the area being given its own name. read more…
Canal Street is a major east-west street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, running from East Broadway between Essex and Jefferson Streets in the east, to West Street between Watts and Spring Street in the west. It runs through the neighborhood of Chinatown, and forms the southern boundaries of SoHo and Little Italy as well as the northern boundary of Tribeca. The street acts as a major connector between Jersey City, via the Holland Tunnel (I-78), and Brooklyn, via the Manhattan Bridge. It is a two-way street for most of its length – from West Street to the Manhattan Bridge – with two unidirectional stretches between Forsyth Street and the Manhattan Bridge. Early in the 20th century, the jewelry trade centered on the corner of Canal Street and Bowery, but moved mid century to the modern Diamond District on 47th Street. In the 1920s, the Citizens Savings Bank built a notable domed headquarters at the intersection’s southwest corner which remains a local landmark. The portion of Canal Street around Sixth Avenue was New York’s principal market for electronics parts for a quarter-century after the closing of Radio Row for the building of the World Trade Center. read more…
World Trade Center is a terminal station in Lower Manhattan for PATH rail service. It was originally opened on July 19, 1909, as Hudson Terminal, but was torn down, rebuilt as World Trade Center, and re-opened July 6, 1971. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, a temporary station opened in 2003. This station serves as the terminus for the Newark – World Trade Center and Hoboken – World Trade Center routes. The main station house, the Oculus, opened on March 4, 2016, and the terminal was renamed the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, or World Trade Center for short. read more…
SoHo is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City, which in recent history came to the public’s attention for being the location of many artists’ lofts and art galleries, but is now more noted for its variety of shops ranging from trendy upscale boutiques to national and international chain store outlets. The area’s history is an archetypal example of inner-city regeneration and gentrification, encompassing socio-economic, cultural, political and architectural developments. The name “SoHo” refers to the area being “SOuth of HOuston (Street)”. This began a naming convention that became a model for the names of emerging and re-purposed neighborhoods in New York such as TriBeCa for “TRIangle BElow CAnal Street”, DUMBO (“Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass”), NoHo (“NOrth of HOuston Street”), Nolita (“NOrth of Little ITAly”) and NoMad (“NOrth of MADison Square”), among others. read more…
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