"[3] Wouter van Twiller, colonial governor of New Amsterdam, once owned a tobacco farm near 8th and MacDougal Streets.

[4] Nearby, a Native American trail crossed the island via the rights-of-way of Greenwich Avenue, Astor Place, and Stuyvesant Street.

By 1835, the New York University opened its first building, the Silver Center, along Eighth Street near the Washington Square Park.

[11] Publisher Evert Augustus Duyckinck founded a private library at his 50 East Eighth Street home.

Anne Lynch started a famous literary salon at 116 Waverly Place and relocated to 37 West Eighth Street in 1848.

In addition, the Brevoort Hotel, as well as a marble mansion built by John Taylor Johnston, were erected at Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street.

The area around St. Mark's Place was nicknamed Kleindeutschland, or "Little Germany", because of a huge influx of German immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s.

At the same time, Jews, Hungarians, Poles, Ukrainians, and Russians from Eastern Europe started moving in.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Daniel Chester French, and other artists moved in the stables at MacDougal Alley at this time.

By 1916, a studio complex for artists replaced most of these stables, making the areas around Eighth Street popular for bohemians.

[4] On an adjoining block, the Women's House of Detention was built in Jefferson Market complex in 1929–1932 and existed through the 1970s.

Sailor's Snug Harbor, the other major land owner, demolished the blocks from Fifth Avenue to Broadway on the north side of Eighth and Ninth Streets, including the popular Brevoort Hotel.

[4] After the elevated train lines were demolished in the 1940s and 1950s, the real estate industry tried to entice residents to the St. Mark's Place area, describing the neighborhood as "East Village".

[10] A women's clothing store, a pharmacy, and bookstores were replaced by fast food restaurants and other shops, directed toward the area's tourism base.

[14] In 1980, hot dog company Nathan's Famous moved into the location of a former bookstore on Eighth Street, to the anger of some Greenwich Village residents.