Italian caffes transforming into coffeehouses drew bohemians to south Washington Square tenements

Evidence

The battle for the Village had been joined in the mid-1950s. The blocks around Seventh Avenue and Sheridan Square, where the Village Voice had its office, had been the neighborhood’s prime entertainment zone. But as the Italian espresso caffès transformed into Americanized coffeehouses, the tenement blocks south of Washington Square proved a magnet for Beat poets, folksingers, and all manner of stand-up extroverts. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 257

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to ‘Grafting & Growth’ gentrification-underworlding angle only tangentially; more relevant to the reader’s stated goal of understanding material conditions that enabled scene density — cheap rent and proximity. Good support for the turf-wars origin story.