The Mini Rough Guide to New York (Travel Guide eBook) by Rough Guides

Author:Rough Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, NEW YORK
Publisher: Apa Publications
Published: 2022-07-14T04:57:54+00:00

Abe Nowitz/Apa Publications

The Gay Liberation statue in Christopher Park

Meatpacking District and Chelsea

The northwest corner of Greenwich Village from West 14th Street to Gansevoort Street is a designated historic district of cobbled streets and warehouses. Home to a meat market during the last century, the area is now awash with trendy boutiques, restaurants, bars, clubs and hotels.

The High Line ™ [map] (www.thehighline.org; daily June–Sept 7am–11pm, Apr–May and Oct–Nov until 10pm, Dec–Mar until 7pm) is a major public park built on elevated railroad tracks. These tracks were originally constructed in the 1930s to lift freight trains off the streets of Manhattan. They have been converted into a beautifully landscaped walkway that stretches 1.45 miles (2.3km) from Gansevoort Street to West 34th Street and 10th Avenue, with multiple entrances and exits. The High Line ends at the Hudson Yards development of skyscrapers, where the Edge (www.edgenyc.com/en) offers sensational panoramic views 100 stories up.

Housed in a striking building by architect Renzo Piano back in the Meatpacking District, the excellent Whitney Museum of American Art # [map] (www.whitney.org; Mon and Wed–Thu 10.30am–6pm, Fri 10.30am–10pm, Sat and Sun 11am–6pm) was originally founded by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, an artist from one of New York’s wealthiest families. It is one of the few museums that is dedicated solely to American art and that seeks out works from alternative media, such as film and video. By focusing its collection on contemporary American artists (both those of Ms. Whitney’s era and those of today), it has gone a long way toward changing attitudes about the diversity and strength of the country’s art. The permanent collection includes works by such artists as Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, Georgia O’Keefe, Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, and Mark Rothko. Curators continue to build and show works by living artists.

Village voices

Since the Art Nouveau period, Greenwich Village has been one big ‘village of genius’ and home of the artistic avant-garde. The radical paper Masses, whose contributors included Maxim Gorki, Bertrand Russell, and John Reed, had its offices here. In 1914, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney opened a gallery and provided a platform for contemporary artists, much of whose work was highly controversial. In 1916, members of the Playwrights’ Theater settled on MacDougal Street and soon achieved fame, Eugene O’Neill among them.

After World War II the Bohemian image of ‘the Village’ persisted. In the 1950s, the beatnik movement flowered (Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg); in the 1960s and early ’70s the area was home to hippies and anti-Vietnam war activists (Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin).

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