For just over a hundred years now, Seventh Avenue South has run through the heart of Greenwich Village. And yet, very little is known today about the context of the birth and the ongoing change of this unique thoroughfare and its unusual cityscape. Only few publications on Greenwich Village mention the Avenue, and do so fleetingly, offering a general impression of rejection.

This talk, on the other hand, aims to present a first more comprehensive look at this intriguing avenue. Uncovering its multiple origins, revealing its violent construction and disastrous beginnings, and following its slow but steady evolution over a century, it proposes a new perspective and a better understanding of the way this thoroughfare appears at present. Underlining how far the Avenue has developed since its opening in the mid-1910s is particularly relevant today as it seems to have finally succeeded in creating an urban and social space that fulfills at least some of the initial visions that went unrealized at the start.

About the Speaker: 

Patrick Leitner is associate professor of architectural and urban design and theory at the Paris-La Villette School of Architecture. When living and working in New York twenty-five years ago, he started researching urban interactions, principally between New York, Paris, and London. He holds a PhD degree and is the author of several articles on inter-urban relationships, developing the concept of ‘Society of cities’ of which Seventh Avenue South forms part and on which his research is ongoing.