Our walking tour of the West Village starts on the High Line. This is easily the coolest park in New York. It runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District through Chelsea, and although it's small (just 1.45 miles long), it's built atop an elevated section of a disused railroad spur called the West Side Line. The park was the brainchild of a group called Friends of the High Line, who wanted to turn this abandoned space into something for community use. 
This aerial greenway is a treat in a city like New York where green space is hard to come by. The areas alongside the walking path are covered in perennials, shrubs, grass and trees, so you really feel like you're in a park, even as you stand a few dozen feet above busy avenues. These plants were purposefully arranged to look wild, just like the vegetation that grew on the abandoned railroad tracks. 
Particularly during warmer weather, the High Line's calendar is full of events, from art sessions for children to dance classes for adults. It's a great spot to come and kick back, ice cream cone in hand, and just people-watch.

The High Line

Smack bang in the middle of the Meatpacking district and right under the High Line is this popular food hall. Chelsea Market lives in the redbrick former factory that housed the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) from 1898–1958 and was where the Oreo cookie was invented. The market opened in 1997 and today is full of restaurants, cafés and bars, as well as offices, shops and Food Network production facilities. Fans of the cooking show Iron Chef America will be interested to know that it's filmed right here. 
While you're here, why not pick up supplies for a picnic back up on the High Line? Try Manhattan Fruit exchange for produce and Amy's bread for delicious baguettes. The food options at Chelsea Market range from sweet treats at Eleni's cupcake shop and the Fat Witch Bakery to upscale sushi at Morimoto. For a cheeky afternoon cocktail, head to the Tippler, hidden in the basement of Chelsea Market. And if you want to stroll through Chelsea Market without eating anything, you can ogle vestiges of the building's factory past, such as original wall murals, and display cases of National Biscuit Company memorabilia and photographs.

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Image: "<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chelsea_Market_(49052085186).jpg">Chelsea, Manhattan, NYC</a>" by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/people/83136374@N05" rel="nofollow">Ajay Suresh</a>&nbsp;is licensed under Creative Commons&nbsp;<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en" rel="nofollow">Attribution 2.0 Generic</a><a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en">&nbsp;</a>license.

Chelsea Market

The Ground Zero Museum's location on 14th Street between 9th Avenue and Washington Street might seem a little out of place miles north from the World Trade Center Site, but it's an interesting and an unusual place in the otherwise trendy, hip Meatpacking district. Photographer Marlon Suson spent seven months photographing Ground Zero in the capacity of official photographer for the FDNY Fire Unions. This museum displays hundreds of photographs taken by Suson and artifacts pulled from the wreckage of the World Trade Center site. It aims to tell the story of 9/11 to visitors from around the world, but is family-friendly and does not contain graphic photos. The museum donates much of its proceeds to the Fire Department of New York and other 9/11 charities. Admission to the museum includes a two-hour guided tour.

Ground Zero Museum Workshop

For a long time, the Meatpacking district was the kind of place where people went for expensive meals and cocktails with eye-popping prices. But when the Whitney moved downtown in 2014, bringing its huge collection of 20th- and 21st-century American art, the area got a much-needed dose of culture. For nearly 50 years, the Whitney was an Upper East Side institution, on Madison Avenue at East 75th Street. Yet this is not the first time the Whitney has been downtown; when the museum was first founded by artist and philanthropist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, it was housed in three 1838 rowhouses on West 8th Street. Whitney opened it to showcase her personal collection of 500 pieces, which she had offered to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and which they declined. Bad move on their part, but good for us. 
Today's Whitney Museum is a world apart from its first historic home. The sleek nine-story building designed by Renzo Piano sits at the southern entrance to the High Line. Its 50,000 sq ft of galleries can showcase large-scale pieces, like those in a Frank Stella retrospective or a Jared Madere exhibition. Head up to the rooftop deck for knock-out views of the city skyline.

Whitney Museum of American Art

This leafy West Village street sits right in the middle of Greenwich Village Historic District. There are many such lovely streets in the West Village, but what makes Bank Street stand out is that for a fairly short street, it's had a lot of residents. The street takes its name from the Bank of New York, founded by Alexander Hamilton. Three of its blocks west of Hudson Street are packed in Belgian block, which is similar to cobblestone. 
No. 155 was once the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Actress Pearl Bailey was living at No. 109 when, in 1967, she won a Tony award for her role in Hello Dolly. Just two doors down at No. 105, John Lennon and Yoko Ono lived from 1971–73. No. 75, on the corner of Bank and Bleecker streets, was where 17-year-old Betty Bacall (a.k.a Lauren) moved right before becoming Miss Greenwich Village 1942. Novelist John Dos Passos lived at No. 11 from 1924–25, writing Manhattan Transfer. More recently, it was at No. 63 that punk rocker Sid Vicious sadly died of a heroin overdose on February 1, 1979. 
Beyond the celebrities who've lived on Bank Street, there are several handsome homes worth walking by. These include Nos 37, 128 and 130, three 1837 Greek revival rowhouses and number 68, an 1863 Renaissance Revival townhouse.

Bank Street (Greenwich Village Historic District)

There was a time when&nbsp;independent bookstores were all over Greenwich Village, but today they are far and few between. These shops have small but loyal followings, bibliophiles who love the feel and smell of a good book. Left Bank Books sells used and rare books, many on the arts, but you may also come across such gems as a 1979 edition of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet or a first edition of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.&nbsp; 
This small shop has managed to survive the sweeping gentrification of this once bohemian enclave, though to do so has not been easy. The original Left Bank Books was actually tiny Bookleaves, on the corner of West 4th and Bank streets. It opened in 1992, 300 sq ft of books piled high and haphazardly. In 2005, Kim Herzinger walked in. A week later, he was back; signing a five-year lease. He paid $15,000 for the shop's contents. In 2010, when his landlord would not renew the lease, Herzinger made a plan: he would move around the corner. To keep the shop afloat, Herzinger, a professor, took a teaching job in Austin. It's in this way that Left Bank Books is not only a neighborhood bookshop but also a wonderful example of what people will do to keep a dream alive in New York.

Left Bank Books

This branch of the New York Public Library was once the Jefferson Market Courthouse and adjacent prison. As you'll surely agree, the building, designed by architects Frederick Clarke Withers and Calvert Vaux (himself half of the Central Park design team), is one of the city's most unique. 
The grand Victorian-Gothic-style structure was built between 1875 and 1877, at a cost of nearly $360,000, a huge sum in the late 19th century. The second-floor civil court is now the adult reading room, while the first-floor police court is now the children's room. The basement, with its handsome brick arch, has gone from a holding area for prisoners to the reference room. 
By 1927, the courthouse was used only for women's trials and the neighboring prison was torn down, replaced by the world's only Art Deco prison, the Women's House of Detention. It was here that Mae West received a $500 fine and one day's imprisonment on obscenity charges levied against her Broadway show Sex. The House of Detention was short-lived, razed and replaced in 1973 by the lovely Jefferson Market Garden. In the late 1950s, Jefferson Market Courthouse itself almost befell the same fate; the city planned to tear it down, but neighbors, including E.E. Cummings and Margot Gayle, banded together and the building was saved. In 1965, it began its transformation into the library you see today, opening its doors in 1967.

Jefferson Market Library

Greenwich Village has always been a liberal enclave, even in liberal-leaning Manhattan. It, and later Chelsea, have long been the epicenter of New York's LGBT scene. In fact, it was what happened at the Stonewall Inn that began the modern LGBT rights movement in the United States. On June 28th, 1969, the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar popular with the LGBT community. The bar's patrons decided enough was enough. No longer would they be harassed by the police. A violent riot took place, setting off a chain reaction across the US. In the years immediately after the Stonewall riots, gay rights groups began to form openly&nbsp;across the US. 
The original Stonewall Inn, at 51–3 Christopher Street, was owned by the mafia. It closed in 1969 but the building remained, and in 1990, Stonewall opened at 53 Christopher Street, returning to its original name in 2007. Three years later, it was designated a National Historic Landmark. Today there are plenty of LGBT-focused bars in New York City, but as you walk past the Stonewall Inn, keep in mind that in 1969, this was one of the only places where LGBT community members could be themselves.

Stonewall Inn

Could you live in this super narrow house? At just 9.5ft wide, this quaint 1873 townhouse is the narrowest in New York. The three-story redbrick house is believed to have been a carriageway for the adjacent home, a 1799 townhouse built by Joshua Isaacs, the oldest house in Greenwich Village and among the oldest in New York. 
75 1/2 Bedford Street went through several residents before Pulitzer-prize winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay moved in with her husband from 1923–4. Later occupants include cartoonist William Steig, along with his wife, Elizabeth, and her sister, well-known anthropologist Margaret Mead and then children's book author Ann McGovern, inspiring her to write Mr Skinner's Skinny House. The house is not open to the public, but you can certainly take pictures out front. Where else will you find a handsome home so narrow, squeezed in between its two larger neighbors? 
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75 1/2 Bedford Street

Keen cinephiles may recognize the exterior of St. Luke's from the 2008 film Doubt, an adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer-winning play of the same name. The cornerstone for St. Luke's was laid in 1821, on a field donated by Trinity Church. In 1891, St. Luke's would become a parish of Trinity Church, not turning independent again until 1976. 
The redbrick Federal-style church is Episcopalian, and fitting for its location in Greenwich Village, it's progressive. St. Luke's is open to everyone, regardless of religious affiliation. The church has three female reverends, and nearly half of its congregants are part of the LGBT community. In the 1980s, when the HIV/AIDS epidemic seemed to reach its apex in Greenwich Village, St. Luke's began its AIDS Project, serving meals to those in need and, later, participating in the annual Gay Pride parade. 
In 2001, the church also began a program to work with LGBT youth, many of whom are homeless. In doing so, St. Luke's further strengthened its bond with the neighborhood that it has for nearly 200 years called home.

The Church of St. Luke in the Fields

New York has some 2,000 public parks and Washington Square Park is among its most well known. Its northern entrance, at the end of Washington Place, is marked by the iconic Washington Square Arch. The 77ft arch as you see it today is not quite the original. In 1889, when the city was planning a celebration to commemorate the centenary of George Washington’s inauguration, Washington Square North resident William Rhinelander Stewart commissioned Stanford White to design a temporary arch. White's papier-mâché and plaster arch, topped with a wooden statue of George Washington, was a hit. In 1892, White's permanent arch was rebuilt using Tuckahoe marble. 
The park marks the southern end of Fifth Avenue (walk north from here and you will be able to see the Empire State Building at Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street). Once a marsh utilized by the Native American Lenape, the area was overtaken by the Dutch in the mid-17th century and converted into farmland. Then, after the Revolutionary War, it became a potter's field (public burial ground). 
In 1826, it was turned into Washington Parade Ground and its border streets became elite residences. In 1870, it was transformed into a park. 
In 1935, Robert Moses wanted to turn the park into a traffic thoroughfare, but it was not to be. Washington Square Park was, before World War I and into the 1960s, a favorite of bohemians, and it was here that Joan Baez and Bob Dylan played guitar and sang around the fountain. Today, the park teems with students from NYU, which owns many of the surrounding buildings, but it remains the ultimate Village community center.

Washington Square Park

Opposite Washington Square Park is this Romanesque-style church, commissioned in 1888 by preacher Edward Judson as a memorial to his father, missionary Adoniram Judson. With the backing of philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, the church was designed by architect Stanford White. Its beautiful stained glass windows were done by artist John LaFarge and the sculptural work by Augustus St. Gaudens. It was Judson's hope that the church would become a common meeting point for the Italian immigrants of the South Village and the Washington Square North elite. And although this was not entirely the case, today Judson's dream has essentially come true. 
The church today is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and American Baptist Churches. Like many houses of worship in Greenwich Village, Judson Memorial Church is progressive and open to all; it is pro-choice, welcomes LGBTQ community members, does HIV and AIDS protection and prevention work, and is active in supporting refugees. 
The church is also well known for its arts program. Starting in the 1950s, it hosted innovative and avant-garde artists and continues to do so today with modern dance performances and concerts. In the 1950s and '60s, artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Yoko Ono exhibited their work here. 
 
We hope you've enjoyed your tour of one of New York City's most interesting neighborhoods. See ya later!

Judson Memorial Church

Hi! My name is Ian&nbsp;and I’ll be your guide on this tour of New York’s West Village.&nbsp;This tour takes approximately three hours to complete. You can stop at any time and start again at the same spot later. You can follow the route on your phone or simply listen as I guide you from one sight to the next. I’ll be giving you clear directions and the audio will automatically start playing when you get close to the next sight on the tour. Don’t worry if you need to skip a sight as the tour will pick up at the next location. One more thing before we get started – always be aware of your surroundings and be sure to obey all traffic signals.

I’ll be showing you around one of New York's most picturesque neighborhoods, whose quiet streets are lined in brownstones and leafy trees. We'll also stroll in its neighbor, the Meatpacking district, the new home to the Whitney Museum of American Art. The West Village has a lot of green space, and our tour starts and ends at parks, beginning at the High Line, an elevated park built on disused railroad tracks, and ending at iconic Washington Square Park. On our walk, we'll visit historic sites like Jefferson Market Library, a handsome courthouse-turned-library and the Stonewall Inn, which played a pivotal role in the US's LGBT rights movement. If you're ready, let's begin at our first stop, the High Line.

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A Walk Through New York's West Village

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A Walk Through New York's West Village

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