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By Sharon Zukin

On a recent Saturday afternoon, along with 200 other two-legged residents of Greenwich Village and an equal number of their four-legged friends, I attended a protest meeting against New York University’s Plan 2031, a 20-year strategy to increase the size of NYU’s physical presence in New York City by 6 million square feet, 2 million of those to be newly built in the heart of our neighborhood.

Photo by Sharon Zukin.

To be honest, the canine protesters came first. Their owners, incensed by the university’s plan to demolish a small Japanese garden, a dog run and other open spaces surrounding, or enclosed by, the present superblocks of faculty housing south of Washington Square Park, led the dogs to Judson Memorial Church on the southern edge of the park in a camera-ready show of disapproval. But this was just the prelude to more serious mobilizing.

The protest was called by Deborah Glick, the district’s elected representative to the New York State Assembly. She spoke strongly against the university’s plan and introduced other local elected officials — State Senator Thomas Duane; Brad Hoylman, the chair of Manhattan’s Community Board 2; and representatives of several block and neighborhood associations — who promised to support the community’s interests against NYU’s all-out campaign to win approval for the expansion.

“This project is just too big,” Senator Duane said.

“Never before has a residential neighborhood been asked to give up its historic character in favor of a commercial-retail complex to benefit a large private university,” another speaker exclaimed.

“Save the Village,” chanted Assemblymember Glick.

“Light, space, green,” the crowd responded.

Photo by Sharon Zukin.

Greenwich Village does have a strong sense of its own history and identity, which is in large part founded on the David-and-Goliath legend of one of its most famous residents, the urbanist Jane Jacobs, who worked with her neighbors to defeat Robert Moses’s audacious plans to ruin the neighborhood by urban renewal. During the 1950s and early 1960s Jacobs and other residents of the West Village engaged in vociferous though nonviolent protests against the building of a road through the middle of Washington Square Park, against high-rise public housing projects and against a cross-Manhattan expressway, all of which would have torn through the dense grid of small blocks that make up lower Manhattan.

Speakers at the NYU rally could not avoid evoking Jacobs’s spirit. “Thirty-five years ago,” the chair of the community board said — erring by two decades but getting the crowd’s attention — Jacobs fought powerful forces and won. We have to “embody her spirit” now, he said. “We’re going to fight just like Jane Jacobs did.”

Jane Jacobs, chairman of the Community to save the West Village. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

But this is not a fight of poor people or defens

By Sharon Zukin E. B. White was correct when he wrote more than sixty years ago that New York is a city of neighborhoods, and he was even more correct that every neighborhood has its own “little main street.” “No matter where you live,” he says, “you will find within a block or two a grocery store, a barbershop, a newsstand and shoeshine shack, an ice-coal-and-wood cellar.., a dry cleaner, a laundry, a delicatessen” and on to the “hardware store, a liquor store, a shoe-repair shop.” Except for the coal

Browsing the shelves of our Lower School library inevitably leads to finding some gems. From the slightly creepy Baby Island, to the magical Gone Away Lake, I usually end up discovering some children's books that may not have otherwise ended on my radar. This time my find was The Bells of Bleecker Street. Since my school is located on the corner of Bleecker Street, I was automatically drawn to this title, and I was happily reading about Joey and his antics over the weekend.

Joey Enrico is a neighbourhood boy. He and his pals hang around the Greenwich Village area. Their main social activities center around The Church of Our Lady of Pompeii, the pushcarts along Bleecker and Sheridan Square. Joey's dad is off fighting in World War II, and Joey is missing him fiercely. He tries to help out in his father's framing shop and stay out of trouble.

But trouble seems to find Joey. Especially when he is hanging out with his friend Pete "the Squeak" Ryan. One day, Joey and Pete decide to go into Our Lady of Pompeii to see the new statue of Saint John. After seeing the new statue, the boys go to see the old one, the one that Joey was baptized under. When the toe of the old Saint John breaks off under Joey's fingertips, Joey panics. The ever mischievous Pete, however, convinces Joey that Saint John's toe should be treated like a rabbit's foot. Joey should keep it for good luck. After all, couldn't Joey use some luck?

So, Joey puts the toe in his pocket and hits the streets. Does his luck change? Maybe a little bit, but Joey is wracked with guilt about his theft.

Valenti Angelo's The Bells of Bleecker Street is a wonderful example of children's literature from the 1940s. Well written chapters are almost stories within the story. Joey and his pals are all squeaky clean family boys who help out around the neighbourhood and generally do the right thing. Joey's Italian family's heritage is examined through everyday activities, and it's interesting to note the differences put forth concerning Pete's Irish family. This is sweet storytelling that would make a great read aloud.