Romany Marie’s bohemian cafes in the Village

If you were a struggling artist in the early 1900s, Romany Marie (left) was your ally.

Born in Moldavia, the former anarchist came to Greenwich Village in the early 1900s, when the neighborhood was gathering steam as a hotbed of radical politics and artistic creativity.

For the next several decades she ran a series of dimly lit tea rooms and taverns offering gypsy music, cheap eats, and a salon-like vibe where ideas flowed freely.

Oh, and she sometimes fed artists for free when they couldn’t afford a meal. No wonder she attracted such a devoted following of Village bohemians.

John Sloan’s famous sketch, “Romany Marye’s in Christopher Street, 1922” (above) was drawn at her 20 Christopher Street restaurant.

Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote her famous “my candle burns at both ends” line there.

Romany Marie also ran establishments at 15 Minetta Street, 49 Grove Street, and 64 Washington Square South at Thompson Street.

She died in 1961, when the Village still had its bohemian rep but was a very different place.

The Village Voice blog Runnin’ Scared reran her obituary here.

The tiniest plot of private property in New York

Or at least until the 1930s, anyway. At the corner of Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue South in the West Village, in front of the iconic Village Cigars store, lies this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mosaic embedded in the sidewalk.

Its tough-talking message: “Property of the Hess Estate Which Has Never Been Dedicated For Public Purposes.”

What’s the backstory? In the 1910s, when the city was expanding the IRT subway line, officials tore down a nearby apartment building owned by the estate of a New Yorker named David Hess.

A small triangle of land was left over, and officials wanted the Hess family to donate it so the city could extend the sidewalk.

Nothing doing. The Hess Estate fought it out in court, won the right to preserve their little plot, and embedded the tile plaque as kind of a victory symbol. In 1938, however, they sold it to the Village Cigar owners.

The end of the Sixth Avenue El

This photo was taken in 1939, just after the el was dismantled. Imagine how grimy and dark Sixth Avenue must have been with trains constantly roaring overhead and the tracks and stations blocking out sunlight.

Plenty more has changed at the intersection of Sixth Avenue, Greenwich Avenue, Ninth Street, and Christopher Street in the ensuing 70 years. Sixth Avenue traffic no longer flows two ways. The Women’s House of Detention was torn down and turned into a lovely garden. Nedick’s hot dogs is now a Barnes & Noble.

And there’s now a traffic island in the middle of the intersection—making things even more chaotic and confusing for pedestrians and drivers alike.

Three ways of looking at 329 Bleecker Street

Decades before Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren, and Magnolia colonized Bleecker Street in the West Village, it was a small-scale main street running through the Village’s thriving Italian neighborhood, packed with groceries, fish stores, and bakeries.

This little building, on Bleecker and Christopher Streets, looks like a grocery; see the crates getting some shade (no AC back then) behind the canopy. It was constructed between 1802 and 1810, predating the city’s grid system. The photo is from 1925.

Over the years the little house and storefront continued to be used as a grocery store or deli. Here it is in 1975. Looks like it was painted white.

Today, the house—and remarkably, the other houses around it—still stands. The clapboard siding, shutters, and old-style lamppost are gone, but the little quarter-round windows remain.