Morton St, West Village

While the houses on the eastern end of this slender Greenwich Village Street are beautiful in the traditional Greenwich village manner - nineteenth-century brick, wrought-iron balustrades, trees shading these out-of-the-way blocks - the charm factor of the neighborhood drops precipitously as you head further west, approaching the blare and bustle of the West Side Highway (although cyclists will find much to enjoy on the riverside bike path - if they can brave the traffic and find a way across!) . In the eastern end of the street, you're near the popular (and historic) Cherry Lane Theatre, lovely dining venues like the Cornelia Street Cafe, Snack Tavern, and the Hudson Clearwater Restaurant, the scene dries up just a few minutes' walk west. Overall this is a great street if you're in the "Greenwich Village" part of it, but gets less pleasant the closer you are to the highway. It's still only a few minutes' walk of a difference overall, though - so even at its worst Morton Street has a fabulous location.

Morton Street starts out at Bleecker Street, and then does a pretty little curve, before it crosses Hudson Street, and then finishes off at the West Side Highway. It's at a very lowermost part of Greenwich Village, so the residential brownstones at its inception are gorgeous, with the small, intimate feel typical for Greenwich Village streets, and even ivy growing up the sides of buildings. Unfortunately, the idyllic charm doesn't last long, because Morton Street then crosses the behemoth of traffic which is Hudson Street, and suffers from the attendant noise and depressing landscape. Suddenly the brownstones disappear and all you're left with are freight loading docks, pretty much, and huge, faceless concrete slabs for office buildings. There's the Manhattan Developmental Disabilities Center, who claim they are “putting people first.” But when you look around at the bleak, roaring impersonal place that Morton Street becomes between Hudson and the West Side Highway, you have to wonder why they're “putting people” so far away from all humanity, out in the most depressing boondocks you can find. There's a lovely view of the river to reward you for going all the way west, but you really could skip it rather than brave the very dangerous West Side Highway traffic.