[PREV - IMPROPER_BOHEMIANS]    [TOP]

GREENWICH_SECEDES

                                           January 16, 2009


Allen Churchill, in "The Improper Bohemians" (1959)
describes a famous event from 1917, the declaration       IMPROPER_BOHEMIANS
of independence of Greenwich Village in Washington
Square. (p. 155-157)

This was a follow-on to an early
attempt by Ellis O. Jones in 1913
which was (a) set in Central Park        Churchill plays this like so:
and (b) rained out.  It was poorly
attended except for the police who       "Nothing, perhaps, better
arrested them.                           indicates the end of a
                                         serious era and the
                                         beginning of a lighter one
                                         than the Second Revolution
                                         of Washington Square."

                                                  This is somewhat under-cut
                                                  by Jones' earlier event,
                                                  in the same year as the
                                                  Paterson Pageant.
"... the instigator of the Second Republic
of Washington Square was a willowy,
bobbed-haired, Texas-born Villager named
Gertrude Drick.  ...  [she] suffered spells
of desperate melancholy.  As if to stake
out a claim to this doleful frame of mind
she ordered a stock of black-bordered
calling cards containing the single word
WOE.  These she handed out and when asked
for an explanation answered with supreme
logic, 'Because Woe is me.'

"At street level in the western column of
Stanford White's Washington Square Arch
there was -- and is -- embedded a small
iron door.  ... after entering the doorway,
[she] found herself ascending a steep
stairway to emerge on top of the stately
Arch.  Here she was surrounded by a low,
parapet-like wall which made, she instantly
decided, the perfect spot for launching a
new revolution.  After reading a Secession
Proclamation she would, in the manner of
Ellis O. Jones, call upon President Wilson
to protect Greenwich Village as one of the
small nations.

"Hastening to the ground, she scoured the
Village for Chinese lanterns, red balloons,
food and drink.  It was winter, and she
thoughtfully provided hot water bottles for         A little more detail on
fellow revolutionists to sit on.  Then she          who they were:
invited John Sloan, Marcel Duchamp ... and
a trio of fortunate Villagers named Forrest         "painters John Sloan and
Mann, Charles Ellis and Betty Turner.  Each         Marcel Duchamp, poet
guest was instructed how to open the iron           Gertrude Drick, and
door and, on arriving at the walled space           Provincetown Playhouse
atop the arch was handed a cap pistol with          actors Alan Russell Mann,
which to wage the revolution.  With fitting         Betty Turner, and Charles
gestures, Woe read aloud her Declaration of         Ellis"
Independence (it contained only repetitions
of the word Wheras) proclaiming Greenwich               [ref]
Village an independent republic.  The cap
pistols were fired into the chill night air
and then, says a chronicle of the event,         Drick appears to have
'the proclaimers ate and drank throughout        had a thing for "w" words.
the night.'  When finally the
revolutionists departed, they secured the
red balloons to the wall surrounding the
top of the arch and 'in the morning, police
and passerby were dumfounded to see the
proud balloons sailing into the raw air
from the top of the Arch.' "


--------
[NEXT - BURNING_MOMENTS]