Inside Greenwich Village: A New York City Neighborhood, 1898-1918

Inside Greenwich Village: A New York City Neighborhood, 1898-1918. By Gerald W McFarland. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001. xiv, 272 pp. $29.95, ISBN 155849-299-2.)

Writing in the style of local history, Gerald W McFarland examines Greenwich Village as a microcosm of Progressive Era America. Using census data, diaries, and journals, as well as the newspapers and manuscript and sociological studies of the era, he provides a wealth of detail on the people, places, institutions, and events of the village.

Building on Floyd Dell's seven phases of Greenwich Village (1926), McFarland focuses on the second half of Dell's "sixth village" (1890-1918), a period, he argues, that has been neglected. Although Dell classified the sixth village (1860-1920) as a single entity, McFarland follows subsequent scholars who divided it into two separate experiences:...