The region was a fertile one, and its natural drainage afforded it sanitary advantages which even to this day make it a desirable place of residence. There was abundance of wild fowl and the waters were alive with half a hundred varieties of fish. There were sand hills, sometimes rising to a height of a hundred feet, while to the south was a marsh tenanted by wild fowl and crossed by a brook flowing from the north. It was this Manetta brook which was to mark the boundary of Greenwich Village when Governor Kieft set aside the land as a bouwerie for the Dutch West India Company. The brook arose about where Twenty-first Street now crosses Fifth Avenue, flowed to the southwest edge of Union Square, thence to Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street, across where Washington Square is, along the line of Minetta Street, and then to Hudson River, between Houston and Charlton Streets.
Sir Peter Warren
The interests of the little settlement were greatly advanced in 1744, when Sir Peter Warren, later the hero of Louisburg, married Susannah De Lancey and went to live there, purchasing three hundred acres of land.
Epidemics in the city from time to time drove many persons to Greenwich as a place of refuge. But it remained for the fatal yellow-fever epidemic of 1822, when 384 persons died in the city, to make Greenwich a thriving suburb instead of a struggling village. Twenty thousand persons fled the city, the greater number settling in Greenwich. Banks, public offices, stores of every sort were hurriedly opened, and whole blocks of buildings sprang up in a few days. Streets were left where lanes had been, and corn-fields were transformed into business and dwelling blocks.
Evolution of Greenwich Streets
The sudden influx of people and consequent trade into the village brought about the immediate need for street improvements. Existing streets were lengthened, footpaths and alleys were widened, but all was done without any regard to regularity. The result was the jumble of streets still to be met with in that region, where the thoroughfares are often short and often end in a cul-de-sac.
In time the streets of the City Plan crept up to those of Greenwich Village, and the village was swallowed up by the city. But it was not swallowed up so completely but that the irregular lines of the village streets are plainly to be seen on any city map.
Near where Spring Street crosses Hudson there was established, about 1765, Brannan's Garden, on the northern edge of Lispenard's Meadows. It was like the modern road-house. Greenwich Road was close to it, and pleasure-seekers, who thronged the road on the way from the city to Greenwich Village, were the chief guests of the house.