Tours / Manhattan
Self-guided walking tourWest Village Crooked Streets
A MUSEENYC walking tour · Free, and not sponsored by anyone
- Distance
- 2.2 miles
- Time
- 2 to 3 hours
- Stops
- 13, 8 private (view from the sidewalk only)
- Start
- Washington Square Arch (A/B/C/D/E/F/M to W 4 St)
- End
- Pier 45, Hudson River Park
The only part of Manhattan that ignored the 1811 street grid. Streets bend, cross themselves, and dead-end into courtyards. This walk is mostly about texture: doorways, alleys, brick, ironwork. Go on a weekday morning if you can.
Route card
Screenshot this. Full detail for each stop is further down.
- 1Washington Square Arch
- 2MacDougal AlleyPrivate — view from the sidewalk only
- 3Washington MewsPrivate — view from the sidewalk only
- 4Jefferson Market Library
- 5Patchin PlacePrivate — view from the sidewalk only
- 6Gay Street
- 7Northern DispensaryPrivate — view from the sidewalk only
- 8Cherry Lane TheatrePrivate — view from the sidewalk only
- 975 1/2 Bedford StreetPrivate — view from the sidewalk only
- 10Grove CourtPrivate — view from the sidewalk only
- 11Church of St. Luke in the Fields
- 12Westbeth Artists HousingPrivate — view from the sidewalk only
- 13Pier 45, Hudson River Park
Private stops include people's homes: no gates, no doorways, no photographing into windows.
Get the map
The Google map for this tour is on its way. Until it's up, the walking navigation links below take you from stop to stop, and the printable guide has every stop in it.
Getting there and back
- Start
- A/B/C/D/E/F/M to W 4 St-Washington Sq. Or N/R/W to 8 St-NYU, 6 to Astor Pl.
- Finish
- 1 at Christopher St-Stonewall, two blocks inland from Pier 45. Also A/C/E at 14 St, L at 8 Av.
- Along the route
- Sixth Ave: M5, M7. Hudson St and Eighth Ave: M11, M20. Crosstown: M8 on E/W 8th and 9th St, M14A/M14D SBS on 14th St.
Cutting it short
Every walk here has exits. Good ones on this route:
- After stop 4 (Jefferson Market): F/M at 14 St-6 Av, two blocks north.
- After stop 7 (Northern Dispensary): 1 at Christopher St-Stonewall, one block west.
- After stop 11 (St Luke's): 1 at Christopher St-Stonewall, two blocks east.
The walk through Greenwich Village / West Village, Manhattan
1Washington Square Arch
Open to the publicThe village's front door. Built in marble in 1892 to replace a temporary wooden arch, designed by Stanford White. The park below it was a potter's field and a military parade ground before it was a park, and it still works as the neighborhood's living room: chess hustlers, piano players, NYU students, dogs. Stand under the arch and look north up Fifth Avenue. That view is why the arch is here.
Open in maps ↗40.73082, -73.99733
2MacDougal Alley
Private — view from the sidewalk onlyWalk: Northwest corner of the park, up MacDougal St half a block. The alley opens on your left.
A dead-end cobblestone alley of former carriage houses that served the mansions on Washington Square North. By 1900 artists had taken over the stables as cheap studios. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney had her studio at No. 19 and started what became the Whitney Museum out of it. Private now, but you can see the whole alley from the sidewalk.
Open in maps ↗40.73185, -73.99823
3Washington Mews
Private — view from the sidewalk onlyWalk: Back to Washington Sq North, east past the Greek Revival row at Nos. 21-26, cross Fifth Ave. The mews gate is on your left.
Heads up: Both mews are gated. The view through the bars is the whole experience. Do not push a gate open.
The same idea as MacDougal Alley but longer and better preserved. Stables on the north side, purpose-built studio houses with stucco fronts on the south. NYU owns almost all of it now. Peek through the gate at either end for the full cobblestone run.
Open in maps ↗40.73245, -73.99506
4Jefferson Market Library
Open to the publicWalk: West on Waverly Pl to Sixth Ave, then north 4 blocks. The clock tower is unmissable.
Or ride: M5 or M7 bus north on Sixth Ave.
A pink-and-red Victorian Gothic pile with a clock tower, voted one of the ten most beautiful buildings in America in the 1880s. It was a courthouse, then a market, then nearly demolished, then saved by a neighborhood campaign led by Margot Gayle. Now it is a branch library and you can walk right in. Look up at the stained glass on the stair.
Open in maps ↗40.73508, -74.00075
5Patchin Place
Private — view from the sidewalk onlyWalk: Behind the library. The gate is on W 10th St, just west of Sixth Ave.
A gated cul-de-sac of ten small brick houses built in 1848, reportedly for Basque waiters working at the Brevoort Hotel. e.e. cummings lived at No. 4 for forty years, Djuna Barnes at No. 5, and Marlon Brando and Theodore Dreiser passed through. The gas lamp at the gate is a reproduction, but the scale is real.
Open in maps ↗40.73456, -74.00069
6Gay Street
Open to the publicWalk: W 10th west one block to Waverly Pl, turn left. Gay St is the short bent street on your left.
A single crooked block connecting Christopher Street and Waverly Place, lined with early-1800s Federal and Greek Revival houses. It was a Black residential street in the 1830s, then a speakeasy strip during Prohibition. The bend halfway down is the point: you cannot see one end from the other, which is the whole West Village in miniature.
Open in maps ↗40.73357, -74.00135
7Northern Dispensary
Private — view from the sidewalk onlyWalk: At the bottom of Gay St, where Waverly Pl splits. The triangular building is right in front of you.
A three-sided brick building from 1831 that sat at the intersection where Waverly Place splits. Local trivia: it has two sides on one street (Waverly Place) and one side on two streets (Christopher and Grove). Edgar Allan Poe was treated here for a cold in 1837. Long vacant, still perfect as an object.
Open in maps ↗40.73330, -74.00099
8Cherry Lane Theatre
Private — view from the sidewalk onlyWalk: Southwest on Grove St, left on Bedford St, right on Commerce St. Commerce bends hard and the theater appears on the bend.
A brewery, then a box factory, then a tobacco warehouse, then a theater since 1924. Edna St. Vincent Millay was part of the group that converted it. Beckett, Albee, Mamet and Shepard all premiered work here. The film company A24 bought it and reopened it in 2025 after a renovation. The block, Commerce Street, curves hard for no obvious reason, which makes the theater appear suddenly.
Open in maps ↗40.73173, -74.00435
975 1/2 Bedford Street
Private — view from the sidewalk onlyWalk: Back up Commerce to Bedford St, turn left. No. 75 1/2 is between Commerce and Morton, wedged between two normal-width houses.
Heads up: It is somebody's house. Photograph from across the street.
Nine and a half feet wide, built in 1873 in what had been a carriage alley. Edna St. Vincent Millay lived here, as later did Cary Grant and Margaret Mead. It is a private home, so admire it from across the street. Next door at No. 77 is the Isaacs-Hendricks House, the oldest house in the Village, built 1799.
Open in maps ↗40.73155, -74.00512
10Grove Court
Private — view from the sidewalk onlyWalk: North on Bedford to Grove St, turn right. The iron gate is mid-block on the south side.
A courtyard of six 1850s brick houses set back from Grove Street behind a gate, originally built as cheap housing for workers and nicknamed Mixed Ale Alley. Now some of the most expensive real estate in the city. Do not open the gate. The view through the bars is the view.
Open in maps ↗40.73260, -74.00527
11Church of St. Luke in the Fields
Open to the publicWalk: West on Grove St to Hudson St, left two blocks. The garden entrance is on Hudson, through the churchyard gate.
Heads up: Garden closes early and is shut for private events. If the gate is locked, the church forecourt is still worth the stop.
Founded in 1821 when this really was fields. A fire gutted the church in 1981, and it was rebuilt and reconsecrated in 1985 with its Federal look restored. The reason to stop is the garden: a deep, layered, quiet green space open to the public most days, hidden entirely from Hudson Street. One of the best places in Manhattan to sit down and hear nothing.
Open in maps ↗40.73202, -74.00693
12Westbeth Artists Housing
Private — view from the sidewalk onlyWalk: North on Hudson St about 4 blocks to Bethune St, left to the courtyard entrance. This is a detour north; you walk back down along the river.
Or ride: M11 or M20 bus north on Hudson St.
Thirteen buildings that housed Bell Telephone Laboratories, where early experiments in talking pictures and television were carried out. In 1970 it was converted by Richard Meier into subsidized live-work housing for artists, one of the first adaptive reuses of its kind in the country. Walk into the central courtyard, which is open.
Open in maps ↗40.73696, -74.00930
13Pier 45, Hudson River Park
Open to the publicWalk: West on Bethune to the Hudson River greenway, then south along the water about 4 blocks to the pier at Christopher St.
Or ride: M11 or M20 back down, or skip the detour and go straight from St Luke's.
Heads up: Time this for sunset if you can. The pier faces straight west.
End the walk on the pier. Lawn, benches, and an open view down the Hudson to the harbor. This stretch of waterfront was derelict shipping piers into the 1990s and was a central gathering place for the Village's queer community long before it was a park. Time it for sunset.
Open in maps ↗40.73335, -74.01050
Combining this with other tours
- Tour 3 (East Village to LES) starts at Astor Place, a 10-minute walk east from Washington Square. Do both in one day and you have crossed Manhattan below 14th St.
- Tour 7 (Chinatown and Tribeca) ends at Pier 25. Walk the greenway north 15 minutes and you are at Pier 45 where this tour ends. Run Tour 7 first, then this one in reverse, for a full west-side day.
Take it with you
Download the printable guideA PDF with every stop, direction and transit option, for when your battery or your signal gives out.
Want this one led in person?
This walk is free to follow and always downloadable above. We also lead it privately, for your party only: a licensed New York City Sightseeing Guide doing the navigating and the photographs while you look up at the city instead of at a map.
See private guided walksAbout MUSEENYC
MUSEENYC writes free guides to New York museums, neighborhoods and walks. Nothing here is sponsored, nothing is paid placement, and no one pays to be included.
Questions about a stop, a closure, or anything else on this walk? Reach MUSEENYC at museenyc.tours@gmail.com or @museenyc on Instagram.