ABSTRACT
This Greenwich Village, this dingy slum where “needy men might flee” for peace from the victorious hosts of a huge robber-civilization too ready to enslave them to its dull tasks—this tiny refuge for desperate young lovers of beauty, in the midst of the rushing metropolis—this fragile respite of theirs was already doomed. Greenwich Village could not remain forever islanded amid the roaring tides of commerce. Already the barriers were being broken down; Seventh Avenue was being extended southward, the new subway was being laid; in a little while the magic isolation of the Village would be ended. The tangle of crooked streets would be pierced by a great straight road, the beautiful crumbling houses of great rooms and high ceilings and deep-embrasured windows would be ruthlessly torn down to make room for modern apartment-buildings; the place would become like all the rest of New York City—its gay, proud life would be extinguished. This was inevitable…. But a worse and swifter doom than we could guess was to fall upon Greenwich Village. It was to become a sideshow for tourists, a peep-show for vulgarians, a commercial exhibit of tawdry Bohemianism.
