For all the many words written on Greenwich Village, two questions have never been adequately answered: why did Greenwich Village become the heart of American bohemianism, and the most visible site of American queer rebellion? The answers to these two questions are related, and can be found in the Village’s long history as a site for the incarceration of women.
The Village’s penal history begins in 1796, when New York State opened its first post-Revolution prison in the tiny Village of Greenwich, which was then considered far outside the city. All the rest of this story spirals forward from this moment, but we’re going to jump ahead 120 years to get to the meat of it.
Most historians peg the bohemian-ization of the Village to the start of WWI, but don’t provide an explanation as to why. Emblematic of this genre (and perhaps its progenitor) is Caroline Ware’s incredible sociological study, Greenwich Village: 1920-1930, which recounts her decade spent as a participant-observer in Village life for Columbia University. As she says:
In the War and Post-War years, Greenwich Village became a symbol of repudiation of traditional values. Here congregated those for whom the traditional pattern in which they grew up had become so empty or distorted that they could no longer continue a part of it and submit to the social controls which it imposed. Many who were drawn to the Village came to seek escape from their community, their families, or themselves.
Thus was the countercultural Village born.
And because the Women’s Court was located in Greenwich Village, in 1934, The Women’s House of Detention — a 12-story, maximum security prison and jail complex — was opened there as well. The House of D (as it was often called) stood at the intersection of 10th St., Greenwich St., Christopher St., and 6th Avenue until 1974 (though it was closed in 1971). Over that time, it brought tens of thousands of women to the village every year — and became an unexpected epicenter for queer culture in New York City. To understand why, we have to look at the logic that drove women’s incarceration.
Women’s prisons were first created in the aftermath of the Civil War, as more and more women — particularly Black women — were able to live the kinds of lives that brought them under the thumb of the courts. Prior to this point, the discipline and punishment of women was primarily handled through the hetero-family: the birth family of an unmarried woman; the husband of a married woman; the employers of a domestic servant; or the enslavers of a Black woman in bondage.