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LANDMARKS

Located near Washington Square Park's south-west corner, The Washington Square Methodist Church (135 W. 4th) is an early Romanesque Revival marble edifice designed by Gamaliel King and built in 1859-60. Dubbed the "Peach Church" for its support of Vietnam War protestors, Washington Square Church long provided a neighborhood base for Activist groups such as the Black Panthers and Gay Men's Health Crisis . The church was sold in 2005 to a developer for conversion into residential units.

The West 4th Street subway station at Sixth Avenue is one of the major transfer points in the NYC transit system.

The street is also home to the "Cage" Basketball and Handball courts, a hangout for some of New York's best basketball players and the site of a city-wide Streetball tournament.


HISTORIC LOCATIONS AND RESIDENTS

West 4th Street has always been a center of the Village's bohemian lifestyle. The Village's first tearoom, The Mad Hatter, was located at 150 W. 4th St. and served as a meeting place for intellectuals and artists.

The infamous Golden Swan bar (known as the "Hell Hole"), at the corner of Sixth avenue, was a famous haunt of Eugene O'Neill and the setting and inspiration for his play The Iceman Cometh . Writer Willa Cather 's first NY residence was at 60 Washington Square South (4th Street beween LaGuardia Place and Thompson Place) and radical journalists John Reed and Lincoln Steffens lived nearby at 60 Washington Square South. Reed later worked in a room in the Studio Club building to complete the series of articles that became his account of the Bolshevik Revolution , Ten Days That Shook The World , later the source for the movie Reds .

Sculptor and art patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney established the Whitney Studio Club in a Brownstone at 147 W. 4th Street in 1918 as a place for young artists to gather and show their work. The facility operated for ten years and was the second incarnation of what would later become the Whitney Museum Of American Art . It started the careers of such artists as Ashcan School painter John Sloan , Edward Hopper , whose first one-man exhibit was held there in 1920, and Social Realist s Reginald Marsh and Isabel Bishop . Sloan lived at 240 W. 4th St and painted locations on the street including the Golden Swan.

The street was later home to the famous folk club Gerde's Folk City (11 W. 4th St.), which hosted the NY debuts of Bob Dylan in 1961 and Simon & Garfunkel . Dylan also lived from early-1962 until late-1964 in a small $80-per-month studio apartment at 161 W. 4th Street and the street may have inspired his 1965 hit song " Positively 4th Street ".


REFERENCES