UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

A New York City Neighborhood, 1898–1918

Book Jacket: "Inside Greenwich Village" by G.W. McFarland

Gerald W. McFarland

A vibrant portrait of a celebrated urban enclave at the turn of the twentieth century

In the popular imagination, New York City's Greenwich Village has long been known as a center of bohemianism, home to avant-garde artists, political radicals, and other nonconformists who challenged the reigning orthodoxies of their time. Yet as Gerald W. McFarland shows in this richly detailed study, a century ago the Village was a much different kind of place: a mixed-class, multiethnic neighborhood teeming with the energy and social tensions of a rapidly changing America.

McFarland begins his reconstruction of turn-of-the-century Greenwich Village with vivid descriptions of the major groups that resided within its boundaries: the Italian immigrants and African Americans to the south, the Irish Americans to the west, the well-to-do Protestants to the north, and the New York University students, middle-class professionals, and artists and writers who lived in apartment buildings and boarding houses on or near Washington Square. He then examines how these Villagers, so divided along class and ethnic lines, interacted with one another. He finds that clashing expectations about what constituted proper behavior in the neighborhood's public spaces—especially streets, parks, and saloons—often led to intergroup conflict, political rivalries, and campaigns by the more privileged Villagers to impose middle-class mores on their working-class neighbors. Occasionally, however, a crisis or common problem led residents to overlook their differences and cooperate across class and ethnic lines.

Throughout the book, McFarland connects the evolution of Village life to the profound transformations taking place in American society at large during the same years. While the emergence of a bohemian subculture within the Village attracted the most publicity, there were other changes with broader and more lasting implications, at once anticipating and helping to create the modern model for cosmopolitan community in urban America.

"McFarland has written an excellent book, one that provides a full and fascinating account of this New York City neighborhood during the Progressive Era."

Raymond A. Mohl, American Historical Review
"The relationships among the reformers, the working classes, and the elite Protestant society living north of Washington Square offer insights into American urban life. Included are the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and the movements for trade unions and women's rights. Written in clear, accessible prose, this book is a pleasure to read."

Library Journal

"Although there have been many books written about Greenwich Village, this one offers a view of the 'neighborhood' that highlights the interaction of class, race, ethnicity, culture, and politics in fresh and original ways. The book is very well written and its clarity and accessibility should appeal to a broad and general audience of readers."

Lois Rudnick, author of The Mabel Dodge
Luhan House and the American Counterculture
"The deepest, most richly textured, and most nuanced picture of Greenwich Village ever written. Far from engaging in historical nostalgia for an idyllic lost community, McFarland reveals how, even a century ago, the Village was already a place that gained its identity from the roiling ethnic, political, and class tensions on its streets."

Daniel Czitrom, author of Media and the American Mind:
From Morse to McLuhan

Gerald W. McFarland is professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His books include Mugwumps, Morals, and Politics; A Scattered People: An American Family Moves West; and The "Counterfeit" Man: The True Story of the Boorn-Colvin Murder Case.

American History
288 pp., 40 illus.
$37.50s cloth, ISBN 1-55849-299-2
2001
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