55 Barrow Street, 17 West Village, Manhattan, NY 10014

Contained within the boundaries of and constantly conflated with Greenwich Village, Manhattan’s West Village still stands apart as one of the borough’s finest neighborhoods. Its eastern and southern boundaries are topics of debate, so it’s probably easier to think of the West Village as the place in the city where the streets stop making sense. They quite literally go off the grid, running counter to the pattern north of 14th Street, and are often named — Bleecker, Waverly, etc. — rather than numbered. Some even are uncharacteristically narrow, sett-paved, or curved around corners. Combine those little quirks with the undeniably charming architecture — remarkably preserved by a series of historic districts — and you’ve got yourself, well, a village within a metropolis. Every aspect of the West Village sets it apart from the NYC environs, which is perhaps why it’s been the cradle of many pioneering cultural and social movements.