South Village
Coordinates: 40°43′45″N 74°0′3″W / 40.72917°N 74.00083°W
The South Village is a largely residential area in lower Manhattan, New York City, directly below Washington Square Park. Known for its immigrant heritage and Bohemian history, the South Village overlaps areas of Greenwich Village and SoHo. The architecture of the South Village is primarily tenement-style apartment buildings, indicative of the area's history as an enclave for Italian-American immigrants and working-class residents of New York.
The South Village is roughly bounded by West 4th Street and Washington Square Park on the north, Seventh Avenue and Varick Street on the west,Canal Street on the south, and West Broadway and LaGuardia Place on the east.
Originally home to a merchant class in the early 19th century, by the late 19th century the area was dominated by immigrants, largely from Italy. The Italian immigrants built their own distinct parishes, to distinguish them not only from their Protestant neighbors on the north side of Washington Square Park (in Greenwich Village), but their Irish neighbors in the South Village. By the late 19th century, Italians outnumbered the Irish in the area, but were not preeminent in the local church hierarchy, especially the parish of St. Patrick's, which covered this area. In response, the Italian-American communities of the South Village built Our Lady of Pompeii and St. Anthony of Padua, which remain the area's defining religious edifices. Since the Italian-American community was very poor their parish churches often had to be subsidized by third parties;Our Lady of Pompeii Church was the personal charity of a woman named Annie Leary who is buried in the crypt of Old St. Patrick's Cathedral.
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