Greenwich Village brownstones
— — rowhouses the city built before it learned to hurry.
Not only on a wall.
“The Federal and Greek Revival rowhouses along Bank, Perry, Charles, and West 11th Streets went up between the 1820s and the 1860s, when the Village was the leafy edge of New York. Stoops climb to parlour-floor doors framed by sidelights and fanlights; the brownstone facing came south from Connecticut River quarries on barges. The Greenwich Village Historic District, designated in 1969, was one of the first in the city.
Greenwich Village brownstones, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Greenwich Village occupies the western half of lower Manhattan between 14th Street and Houston, Sixth Avenue and the Hudson River. The neighbourhood's street grid pre-dates the 1811 Commissioners' Plan, which is why Fourth Street meets West Tenth at an angle and Waverly Place crosses itself. The Greenwich Village Historic District was designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in April 1969, covering some 2,200 buildings across roughly 100 blocks. A 2006 Far West Village extension and a 2010 South Village extension added several hundred more buildings on the southern and western edges.
The brownstone that fronts the rowhouses is Triassic sandstone, most of it quarried in Portland, Connecticut along the Connecticut River and shipped down to the East River docks. The colour ranges from chocolate to deep reddish brown depending on iron-oxide content. Behind the stone, the houses are load-bearing brick. Federal examples from the 1820s and 1830s sit closer to the street with simpler door surrounds and dormered roofs; Greek Revival houses from the 1840s and 1850s carry heavier cornices, full-height parlour windows, and the iron areaway railings that define the streetscape.
The 1 train to Christopher Street-Sheridan Square sets you down at the heart of the Village; the A, C, E, B, D, F, and M lines meet at West Fourth Street. The best brownstone walking is the triangle bordered by Hudson, Bleecker, and West 11th: Bank, Perry, Charles, and Grove Streets all retain near-continuous nineteenth-century rowhouses. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation publishes self-guided walking tours, and the Stonewall Inn, Washington Square Park, and the White Horse Tavern are all within a ten-minute walk.