West Village
Neighborhood Intelligence

The West Village is the western part of Greenwich Village, running from West 14th Street down to Houston Street and from Sixth Avenue to the Hudson River. The name came into use during the preservation fights of the 1950s and 1960s, as residents sought to distinguish this district of low-rise historic blocks from the part of the Village around Washington Square Park and New York University. Its streets follow the pre-1811 pattern rather than the Manhattan grid, so many are narrow and curve at odd angles. The Greenwich Village Historic District, created in 1969, covers much of the area, and the Gansevoort Market Historic District protects the cobblestoned Meatpacking District blocks near the river.

The housing stock is townhouses, small apartment buildings, and converted warehouses. The Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street was the site of the 1969 Stonewall riots, and nearby Christopher Park is part of Stonewall National Monument. The Jefferson Market Library occupies a Victorian Gothic former courthouse on Sixth Avenue, the Village Vanguard jazz club and the Cherry Lane Theatre are long-running performance venues, and the Whitney Museum anchors the Meatpacking District. Little Island, a park on piers in the Hudson, opened in 2021.