What makes Greenwich Village special? It could be its rich history--from a working class town, to a progressive artistic hot spot, to a stop on a Sex and the City tour. Greenwich Village has always been a community uniting people with a common cause. Whether it be the civil rights movement, or the crowds of peddlers haggling on the street , the Village has always kept people together. Greenwich offers the most diverse, vocal, and rebellious people in New York City; the inhabitants beat to a different drum which gives the nonstop metropolis ( Solnit 1) its edge.Mitchell Duneier, a Sociology Professor from Princeton, provides an insight to the lives of the unhoused street vendors of New York and their importance to the community in his groundbreaking work Sidewalk (1999). They come from varied unconventional backgrounds and each have their own story of how they became a street vendor, which leads them eventually to be “public characters”. In his study Mitchell Duneier found street vendor Hakim Hasan, who had gone to college before deciding to live on the streets, and who became Duneier's interpreter. When talking to Hakim, he explains what it's like to be a prominent vendor, “People like me are the eyes and ears of the street...That deliveryman sees me everyday. I'm as dependable as any store owner" (Duneier 17). It is evident that the vendors are the ambassadors of the streets. Although the vendors see people daily, they don't necessarily talk or participate in these people's daily lives, but they make a notable impression. Some of the most interesting moments of Duneier’s research involved “public characters” . The term “public characters” is originally from city activist Jane Jacobs, she describes them as "anyone who is in frequent contact with a wide circle and who is sufficiently interested to make himself a public character. A public character need have no special talents or wisdom...he just needs to be present"(qtd. In Duneier 17). Jacobs is most famous for her furious campaigning against an expressway that would cut through Washington Square Park. The expressway was put in place by one of New York's most infamous city planners, Robert Moses. Moses was able to put almost any project in place because the people that he was displacing felt it useless to protest. The people he was moving were usually people of lower income brackets; this was because of the city's biased planning philosophy. This included a “top down” (Jane Jacobs) view that usually favoured the richest and would result in the displacing of many of the city's poorer residents. Jacobs found evidence that showed the city’s old planning methods were out of date. The assumption that overcrowding increases crime in cities is a false statement, and that tight knit communities are a key part of the city. In his aforementioned book Sidewalk (1999), Professor Duneier focuses on several “public characters” in Greenwich Village, who over the last 50 years, have carved out identities and serve important, though unconventional, roles in this community. One character that Duneier focuses on is Hakim Hasan. Hasan was born in Brooklyn in 1957 under the name Anthony E. Francis. When he was in high school, he joined the nation of Islam and gained his new name, Hakim. Technically, Hakim never graduated from high school; when the school was handing out diplomas, Hakim owed the school roughly $500 (Sidewalk), so he did not receive his. Eventually, Hakim left the Church of Islam but decided to keep his adopted name (he still holds a high level of respect for anyone that chooses the path of Islam). During college Hakim began writing for many African American newspapers, this prompted him to attempt work in the publishing business. When he graduated, Hakim applied for jobs at many publishing companies, but he was turned down. During this period, Hakim began to read hundreds of books in his free time. His final straw was being turned down by a bookstore for his alleged incompetence at a local insurance firm. After seeing how book vendors in Greenwich Village were able to subsist in New York without buying into corporate mega companies, he decided that this was the path for him. Greenwich Village has been home to both progressivism and public characters for the past 50 years. They have lived beside each other but have never crossed paths, I think this is just a testament to how diverse and different Greenwich Village is. Just like Jane Jacobs believes in, the city’s problem is not its population; it's the people with power, and the groups that refuse to stand up for what's right. Progressivism has been an essential component in Greenwich Village for almost a hundred years. As a result of the many massive influxes of immigrants to this area, it becomes a melting pot of culture and eventually class distinction. These differences didn’t break the Village apart, but instead allow its people to coexist and blossom into the progressive movement. Greenwich Village was originally founded by the Dutch around the early 1600’s. The first signs of a town appear around 1630 when Dutch settlers began to clear out pastures and planted crops in the area. Another point to note is that this was around the same time that freed African slaves began to live in this town. About 30 years later during 1664, the English claimed New Amsterdam and kicked the Dutch out what was then called Noortwyck. The English then renamed the settlement to something that might sound familiar, Grin’wich. According to the website Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation “Immigration dominated the late 19th century” (Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation). The early 1800’s really began to change this small secluded neighbourhood into the powerhouse that it is today. Around the turn of the century, yellow fever and cholera outbreaks took over the core of the city and forced people to the outer edges. Greenwich Village was swarmed with waves of people awaiting safety from the outbreaks. This prompted investors and architects to begin putting money into this once working class neighbourhood, and moving it up to the middle class. From 1820 to 1860 the gentrification that occurred during the early 1800’s continued, resulting in a row of red brick houses lining Washington Square Park, and an arch commemorating George Washington's centenary of presidency. During the late 19th and into the early 20th century, New York was hit with a massive influx of immigrants. Thousands of people would come through Ellis island everyday, from countries all over the world. because of the huge waves of French, Irish, and Italian immigrants during the late 19th century, the rich and the upper class who moved into the Village began to move out of it and to new upper class neighbourhoods like Fifth Avenue. It was also during this time that factories began to pop up on the shores of Greenwich; this is because of the companies abilities to now hire the Irish and the Italians to work in their factories for very little money. Surprisingly, this was also the beginning of Greenwich’s art period, which debatably is still going on today. Once this “immigrant scare” died down, the art that was being pumped out of Greenwich began to see some attention, prompting entrepreneurs and tourists to visit the Village. This was also a time for rebellion, the Village during this time was known as a place for rebellious behavior. Plays were being put on regardless if people wanted them or liked the content of them; artists began to think freely and discuss very taboo issues. Some of the greatest poets in the Village’s history started their careers off during this time. Poets like Bob Dylan, one of the most influential songwriters of the twentieth century, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, a feminist activist and the third woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, are examples of some of the artistic talent that has come from the Village. This is when progressivism officially hit Greenwich, and it has stayed there ever since. I think the reason that art flourished in Greenwich was because of the diversity of races that lived there, along with the quick change of income levels. This allowed artists to have inspiration.The final, and maybe the most important period, is what I like to call “The Movement Period.” All those pent up ideas from the last 20-30 years begin to spill out as the ideas become marches and protests. The most famous of them all being the gay rights movement, a movement that almost completely embodies the ideas of progressivism; the beat movement was also founded in the Village along with the counterculture movement in the 60’s. Along with these movements, the Village was also a capital for Bohemians in America. Progressivism has been either an undertone or been building up in Greenwich’s history for over 300 years. Some examples of this are the 30 years before the gay rights movement took off in stonewall, or the years of immigration before the rich came back into the Village. The Village has been home to progressivism before it even had a name.What makes Greenwich Village special? It could be its scholar who pushes the boundaries of social sciences and welcomes alternative thinking. Or it could be the activists, who speak out against wrongdoing. Perhaps it could be the people that go unrecognized for their dutiful actions in preserving the well being of their neighbours, even if they live on the streets. It could also be that ever since this small working class neighbourhood was established, these actions have been supported and accepted. The Village makes up the people. The people make up the Village.