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GREENWICH_SECEDES

                                                    January 16, 2009

Allen Churchill, in "The Improper Bohemians" (1959)
describes an event from 1917 when Greenwich Village       IMPROPER_BOHEMIANS
seceded from the United States, and it's declaration
of independence was read in Washington
Square. (p. 155-157)

This was a follow-on to an early
attempt by Ellis O. Jones in 1913       Churchill has a thesis about a shift
which was (a) set in Central Park       from serious to whacky to roaring
and (b) rained out.  It was poorly      (as in 20s), so he plays this like so:
attended except for the police who
arrested them.                          "Nothing, perhaps, better indicates the
                                        end of a serious era and the beginning
                                        of a lighter one than the Second
                                        Revolution of Washington Square."

"... the instigator of the Second           But there was Jones' earlier event,
Republic of Washington Square was a         and that was back during the IWW
willowy, bobbed-haired, Texas-born          extravaganza, the Paterson Pageant.
Villager named Gertrude Drick.  ...
[she] suffered spells of desperate                   And this secession
melancholy.  As if to stake out a claim              of Greenwich Village
to this doleful frame of mind she                    took place in the
ordered a stock of black-bordered                    middle of World War I.
calling cards containing the single word
WOE.  These she handed out and when             WAR_IN_PATERSON
asked for an explanation answered with
supreme logic, 'Because Woe is me.'"
                                                  The heavy and the light
"At street level in the western column            are often intermixed.
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,         A little more detail on
food and drink.  It was winter, and she             who they were:
thoughtfully provided hot water bottles for
fellow revolutionists to sit on.  Then she          "painters John Sloan and
invited John Sloan, Marcel Duchamp ... and          Marcel Duchamp, poet
a trio of fortunate Villagers named Forrest         Gertrude Drick, and
Mann, Charles Ellis and Betty Turner.  Each         Provincetown Playhouse
guest was instructed how to open the iron           actors Alan Russell Mann,
door and, on arriving at the walled space           Betty Turner, and Charles
atop the arch was handed a cap pistol with          Ellis"
which to wage the revolution.  With fitting
gestures, Woe read aloud her Declaration of             [ref]
Independence (it contained only repetitions
of the word Wheras) proclaiming Greenwich
Village an independent republic.  The cap        Drick appears to have
pistols were fired into the chill night air      had a thing for "w" words.
and then, says a chronicle of the event,
'the proclaimers ate and drank throughout
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.'"



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