Waverly Place is a narrow street in the

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

section of the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, that runs from Bank Street to Broadway. Waverly changes direction roughly at its midpoint at

Christopher Street Christopher Street is a street in the West Village neighborhood of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is the continuation of 9th Street west of Sixth Avenue. It is most notable for the Stonewall Inn, which is located on Christopher St ...

, turning about 120

degree Degree may refer to: As a unit of measurement * Degree (angle), a unit of angle measurement ** Degree of geographical latitude ** Degree of geographical longitude * Degree symbol (°), a notation used in science, engineering, and mathematics ...

s from a north/south street to a northwest/southeast street. At Christopher Street, the traffic direction changes as well, from southbound to westbound. At the intersection where this transition occurs, Waverly branches into a Y, creating an intersection of Waverly Place with itself. The two blocks which form the northern border of Washington Square Park – from

MacDougal Street MacDougal Street is a one-way street in the Greenwich Village and SoHo neighborhoods of Manhattan, New York City. The street is bounded on the south by Prince Street and on the north by West 8th Street; its numbering begins in the south. Betw ...

Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping stre ...

, and from Fifth Avenue to University Place – are called Washington Square North. In the block from Fifth to University, there is a unified line of

Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but ...

townhouses, sometimes called "the Row", which are owned and used by

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

. Some of the buildings at the Fifth Avenue end have retained their exterior facades, but are connected together inside to make one larger building. The street was named after

Sir Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels '' Ivanhoe'', '' Rob Roy' ...

's 1814 novel '' Waverley'' in 1833; prior to that it was called Art Street.

Washington Square North

In the 1840s, New York City's elite established Washington Square, far from the increasingly commercial environment of

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...

, as the address of choice. Anchored by the mansion of William C. Rhinelander at the center of Washington Square North, "the Row" of Greek Revival town houses on either side of

presented the unified and dignified appearance of privilege. When the center of New York City society moved north after the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

, the houses on the square came to represent the gentility of a bygone age.

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

, whose grandmother lived at 18 Washington Square North, depicted this nostalgic view in his 1880

tragicomedic Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragic and comic forms. Most often seen in dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the overall mood or a serious ...

novel, '' Washington Square''. Today, the buildings all belong to

. The 1830s row house at 1–3 Washington Square North may be the house in the city most closely associated with a single artist. From 1913 until his death in May 1967, the artist Edward Hopper and his wife, Josephine, lived in a studio on the building's top floor. Chosen for its low rent and the artist's belief that his hero, the American artist Thomas Eakins had painted there, Hopper and his wife leased rooms that lacked central heat or private baths. They decorated their rooms simply, with pieces of early American furniture.

In media

* On the television series '' Mad Men'', Don Draper's bachelor pad is located on Waverly Place. * The television series '' Wizards of Waverly Place'' is set there. * One of the townhouses serves as the protagonist's residence in the 2007 film '' I Am Legend''.''The Rough Guide to New York City''

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

. Retrieved December 30, 2018.

References

External links

Waverly Place: A New York Songline
– virtual walking tour {{Streets of Manhattan, state=collapsed Streets in Manhattan 1840s establishments in New York (state) Greenwich Village

Washington Square North

In media

See also

References

External links