Greenwich Village: Today and Yesterday

Eighth Street, ca. 1945, by Berenice Abbott

Seventy years ago, photographer Berenice Abbott and writer Henry Lanier published Greenwich Village: Yesterday and Today, a book that was one part photographic portrait of the neighborhood, one part history, and one part (quasi) walking tour.

Earlier this summer, James headed out with a copy of the book to see how much of Lanier and Abbott's neighborhood still exists. The results were published today by Curbed NY and can be read at 

https://ny.curbed.com/2019/9/4/20847376/greenwich-village-berenice-abbott-history-tour

Abbott's photos, while not as famous as those she took in the 1930s for Changing New York, capture the Village on the cusp of change. As James notes in the article, many of the places Abbott photographed were already on the verge of closing when she captured the images. Some of the Abbott photos that weren't reproduced in the story are included below.

The Lafayette Hotel, ca. 1945, by Berenice Abbott

Edward Hopper in his studio, ca. 1945-48, by Berenice Abbott

Children playing in Washington Square Park, ca. 1945, by Berenice Abbott

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Read more in

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City
-- NOW OUT AS AN AUDIOBOOK! --

and don't forget

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

Minetta Tavern and the Reader's Digest

As per Eater, Keith McNally’s refit of the Minetta Tavern (at the corner of MacDougal Street and Minetta Lane) will be finished in early 2009 with at least some of the original décor intact.

The tavern was the hangout over the years for a host of literary lights, including e.e. cummings, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was also a favorite of Joe Gould—whose life was chronicled by the New Yorker’s Joseph Mitchell—who claimed to be working on his Oral History of Our Time at the bar.

Also, when the Minetta Tavern was still a speakeasy (called the Black Rabbit), it rented out its basement to Dewitt and Lila Bell Acheson Wallace who published the first issues of the Reader’s Digest there. The magazine’s entrance was rumored to be through a trapdoor in the tavern. Does that mean they shared space with the Black Rabbit’s illicit booze supply?

The first print run of the digest—limited to 5,000 copies—came out in February 1922. By 1923, the Wallaces had moved to Pleasantville, New York, which is still the magazine’s corporate home. Today, the magazine prints over 10 million copies in the U.S. alone and has scores of foreign language versions.

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Photo courtesy of the new Life magazine photo archive over at Google.

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