Scavenger Hunt: Huxtables’ House & Greenwich Village

When our cousins were in town a few weeks ago, we took them on a quick and dirty tour of the city on the one day they had to do sightseeing.  Unfortunately, since we only had time for the highlights, we were unable to see one of their requested sights—The Huxtables’ House.  While on the Cosby Show, the Huxtables were supposed to live in Brooklyn, the house was actually in the West Village.

Here’s what it looks like today:

While walking to SoHo, I went through Greenwich Village and found a few more sights from the book.  One of which was The Stonewall Inn.

In June 1969, this bar (which used to be 19th century stables) was the location of the “Stonewall Rebellion” where hundreds of gays and their supporters filled the street and took part in the first “Gay Pride” parade (Ch. 168).

 

 Next on the “tour” was Washington Square Park, right on the edge of NYU’s campus.  According to Ch. 35, Washington Square Park was established to celebrate the 50th anniversary of America’s independence (it was also established to raise property values—how surprising...).  In order to get space for the park, the mayor at the time used a graveyard which had been the resting place for NYers that had “either died of epidemic diseases, were too poor for a church burial or who were hanged for their crimes”.  (Ch. 35).  Now, the terrible part of this is that these bodies were never disinterred!! That means that the times I’ve walked in the park enjoying people-watching or live music, I’m enjoying it on 20k+ dead bodies!

It’s not your imagination, that Arch does look like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.  The marble Washington Memorial Arch (by Stanford White) is in fact modeled after its Parisian sister.  The underneath of the arch (not photographed) had a bunch of carved roses.  It was quite spectacular and looked well considering it’s 100+ years old and traffic used to pass underneath it until 1959! (Ch. 102).

Behind the Arch and to the right of the picture are a row of redbrick houses called “The Row” (Ch. 39).  In the early 1800’s, these townhomes were the nicest property in NYC.  The original leases ran 99 years and had to be set back a set amount from the street and each had their own stable.  The address of the “Row” conveyed a certain status and was a calling card to those in the know. (Ch. 39).