Greenwich will not straighten its streets nor conventionalise its
views. Its intellectual conclusions will always be just as unexpected
as the squares and street angles that one stumbles on head first. Its
habit of life will be just as weirdly individual as its tangled
blocks. It asks nothing better than to be let alone. It does not
welcome tourists, though it is hospitality itself to wayfarers seeking
an open door. It is the Village, and it will never, never, no _never_
be anything else--the Village of the streets that wouldn't be
straight!
Janvier, who has already been quoted extensively, but who has written
of Greenwich so well that his quotations can't be avoided, says: "In
addition to being hopelessly at odds with the surrounding city,
Greenwich is handsomely at variance with itself."
New York, and especially Greenwich, grew by curious and indirect
means, as we have seen. This fact and a lively and sympathetic
consciousness of it, leads often to seemingly irrelevant digressions.
Yet, is it not worth a moment's pause to find out that the stately
site of Washington Square North, as well as other adjacent and select
territory, was originally the property of two visionary seamen; and
that the present erratic deflection of Broadway came from one
obstinate Dutchman's affection for his own grounds and his
uncompromising determination to use a gun to defend them, even against
a city?
So, lest what follows appears to be a digression or an irrelevance,
let me venture to remind you that the Village has always grown not
only with picturesque results but by picturesque methods and through
picturesque mediums.
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