residential section of Lower Manhattan, New York City, U.S. It is bounded by 14th Street, Houston Street, Broadway, and the Hudson River waterfront. A village settlement during colonial times, it became in successive stages an exclusive residential area, a tenement district, and, after 1910, a rendezvous for nonconformist writers, artists, students, bohemians, and intellectuals. By the 1980s high-rise apartments had turned much of it into a fashionable neighbourhood, and many of its former residents had moved to the East Village (Lower East Side) and SoHo (the area south of Houston Street). Greenwich Village long was characterized by narrow, crooked streets, old houses, foreign restaurants, quaint shops, and offbeat night clubs. Washington Square, in its centre, is dominated by Washington Arch (1895) and New York University buildings.