The corner of St. Marks Place and Second Avenue in the East Village in March 1969.
“… Greenwich Village again became important to the Bohemian scene during the 1950s, when the Beat Generation focused their energies there. Fleeing from what they saw as oppressive social conformity, a loose collection of writers, poets, artists, and students (later known as the Beats) and the Beatniks, moved to Greenwich Village, and to North Beach in San Francisco, in many ways creating the U.S. East Coast and West Coast predecessors, respectively, to the East Village–Haight Ashbury hippie scene of the next decade. The Village (and surrounding New York City) would later play central roles in the writings of, among others, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, William S. Burroughs, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Rod McKuen, Marianne Moore, and Dylan Thomas, who collapsed at the Chelsea Hotel, and died at St. Vincents Hospital at 170 West 12th Street, in the Village after drinking at the White Horse Tavern on November 5, 1953. Off-Off-Broadway began in Greenwich Village in 1958 as a reaction to Off Broadway, and a ‘complete rejection of commercial theatre’. Among the first venues for what would soon be called ‘Off-Off-Broadway’ (a term supposedly coined by critic Jerry Tallmer of the Village Voice) were coffeehouses in Greenwich Village, in particular, the Caffe Cino at 31 Cornelia Street, operated by the eccentric Joe Cino, who early on took a liking to actors and playwrights and agreed to let them stage plays there without bothering to read the plays first, or to even find out much about the content. Also integral to the rise of Off-Off-Broadway were Ellen Stewart at La MaMa, originally located at 321 E. 9th Street, and Al Carmines at the Judson Poets’ Theater, located at Judson Memorial Church on the south side of Washington Square Park. … Greenwich Village also played a major role in the development of the folk music scene of the 1960s. Music clubs included Gerde’s Folk City, The Bitter End, Cafe Au Go Go, Cafe Wha?, The Gaslight Cafe and The Bottom Line. … Dozens of other cultural and popular icons got their start in the Village’s nightclub, theater, and coffeehouse scene during the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, including Eric Andersen, Joan Baez, Jackson Browne, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Richie Havens, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Ian, the Kingston Trio, the Lovin’ Spoonful, Bette Midler, Liza Minnelli, Joni Mitchell, Maria Muldaur, Laura Nyro, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Carly Simon, Simon & Garfunkel, Nina Simone, Barbra Streisand, James Taylor, and the Velvet Underground. …”
Wikipedia
Ephemeral New York: Greenwich Village in the 1960s
Greenwich Village 1960s Folk Music Scene
NY Times: From Macdougal Street to ‘The Bitter End,’ Exploring Bob Dylan’s New York
History of New York City: Greenwich Village
amazon: The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village by John Strausbaugh
1960s: Days of Rage
1960s: Days of Rage 