The city moved northward. Instead of succumbing to the tidal wave of business, the Village became a backwash.
Skyscrapers stayed away. Stables and tumbling shacks remained. But into them came new residents. The district soon became the culture center of New York, and until quite recently, many famed artists, composers, literary lights and show people continued to live there. A few still do.
But a bohemian section always attracts the freaky fringe; those who would live the life of genius without having its admirable attributes, but all its faults and sins.
These, in turn, displaced most of the true intellectuals. In recent years there has been a return to the Village, as modern apartment houses have been run up, especially in lower Fifth Avenue and around Washington Square.
The Village's new "better class" has no more accent on art than on business and politics.
Greenwich Village night life mainly centers around three districts: Sheridan Square, where Fourth Street crosses Seventh Avenue; Eighth Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and Third Street from Sixth Avenue to West Broadway.
Little bistros and boites, and even a few nationally famed clubs nest at sporadic intervals in almost every byway of the Village.
The best-known resorts of Greenwich Village are no more bohemian than any of the better uptown spots. Jimmy Kelly's, a beaut of a room specializing in fan wielders and dancing gals, is patronized chiefly by merchants and Wall Streeters.
The Village Barn, dubbed the Kathedral of Korn, features entertainment like Omaha and is the favorite haunt of jays from Brooklyn, the Bronx and Weehawken. El Chico is a rumba hangout.
On another plane completely are the joints patronized by the Village variants, where the customers are so mixed up the habitues don't know whether to use the boys' room or the other one.