Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay’s former residence at 75 ½ Bedford St. in Greenwich Village is often referred to as the narrowest house in the city — just 9 ½ feet wide. It was built in 1873. (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)NEW YORK – As a teenager in New York City in the gritty 1970s, I often hung out in Greenwich Village with friends. There was nothing cooler than buying a tie-dyed T-shirt in some little shop or listening to a guitar-playing hippie in Washington Square Park.
As an adult in the complicated 21st century, I can still recommend the Village as a magical place to spend a day, but its charms are different now. The neighborhood’s bohemian reputation gave way long ago to expensive real estate, but you can still enjoy a bite in a cafe or a night out listening to live music. And while the city’s latest terror attack unfolded nearby in Lower Manhattan, perhaps a stop in the Village at a peaceful spot like the garden at the Church of Saint Luke in the Fields, 487 Hudson St., is just what a harried visitor needs.
FOOD AND BOOKS
Start your day at Patisserie Claude, a tiny bakery at 187 W. Fourth St., serving yummy little quiches and pastries. For lunch, try the massive chicken Chimayo salad for $13.50 at Cowgirl NYC, 519 Hudson St., though that might leave you too full to sample the goods at Murray’s Cheese Bar, 264 Bleecker. For dinner, find a friend to share Mediterranean small plates at Jack’s Wife Freda, 50 Carmine St., or go for rustic Italian at Rafele, 29 Seventh Ave. South.
If You Go
› Neighborhood guide: www.nycgo.com/boroughs-neighborhoods/manhattan/greenwich-village› Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation: www.gvshp.org/—gvshp/index.htm