Arch Conspirators:
The Free and Independent Republic of Washington Square
On January 22, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson stood before the United States Senate and proposed “that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances which would draw them into competitions of power; catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with influences intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection”. Wilson was adamantly promoting unity abroad, but perhaps the United States government should have kept an eye on what was happening in their own Greenwich Village.
Gertrude Drick first conceived of her plan to claim Greenwich Village's independence when she noticed a discrete door on the West pier of the Washington Square Arch. And most significantly, the door was often unattended due to the resident policeman’s propensity to abandon his station for hours at a time. Drick, an artist and poet, had come to Greenwich Village from Texas to study under painter John Sloan. She had gained notoriety in the Village under the self-imposed nickname ‘Woe’, so that when asked her name she would respond ‘Woe is me.’ She was also a known prankster, and after seeing the door approached Sloan with a plan to hold a mock revolution, an opportunity to recapture Washington Square Park in the name of bohemian unconventionality. Drick and Sloan recruited their fellow bohemians: the actors Forrest Mann, Charles Ellis, and Betty Turner, and the artist Marcel Duchamp to join their rebellion. Duchamp was no stranger to controversy, his painting Nude Descending a Staircase scandalized the art community when displayed at the Armory Show in 1913 because of its total abandonment of realist principles. Together, these six revolutionaries plotted their secession from the Union.
Surprisingly, Drick was not the first to try and free Greenwich Village from the cultural oppression of the United States government. Less than a year earlier, Ellis Jones, an editor for Life magazine planned a “second American Revolution” in which Greenwich Village would become an independent republic through mass protest1. Jones was so confident he had his community’s support that he planned for the event to take place in Central Park Mall, believing Washington Square Park would be too small to contain the anticipated number of supporters. Jones also fatefully scheduled his revolution for a Monday, and although it was summer, it rained, causing only a handful of Jones’ followers to show up. Yet the opposition was there in force; there were dozens of police officers armed with machine guns and ambulances stationed nearby in anticipation of a major anarchist rebellion. Jones was quickly arrested and the call for revolution went unanswered…that is, until Gertrude Drick.
After dark on January 23, 1917, Drick and friends met on lower Fifth Avenue. With no sign of the meandering police officer, they opened the door, climbed up the spiral staircase, pushed open the trap door, and emerged on the top of Washington Square Arch. The bohemians came armed with food, plenty of liquor, hot water bottles for warmth, Chinese lanterns, red balloons, toy pistols, and of course, the Declaration of Independence of the Greenwich Republic, thought to have been written by Duchamp2. The conspirators sat around a small fire and recited verses of poetry while enjoying a picnic. Finally, Drick thought it was time to read aloud their Declaration of Independence. The document itself contained a mockingly high usage of the word ‘whereas,’ which was repeated again and again. The conspirators went through great lengths to ensure that their document was appeared legitimate, even providing mock seal, and making sure all present parties affixed their signatures on the bottom. Once their declaration was declared the balloons were released into the night, the cap guns shot off, and more wine was drunk in celebration. The Free and Independent Republic of Washington Square was born.
As morning crept up, and the group was beginning to disband, Sloan announced that they would leave the arch, “to ply our various callings till such time as the demands of the state again might become imperative”3. It seems Sloan expected to be able to return to their hideout. The next day, all that remained of their late night mischeif were several red balloons, but within a day almost “everyone south of 14th street knew of their status as a liberated community”, and the wealthier inhabitants of Washington Square North found little humor in the “bohemian tomfoolery”4. Sloan commemorated the event in his now famous etching, Arch Conspirators, depicting all six rebels reveling in their moment on top of the arch while Fifth Avenue continues to function like normal down below.
The revolution was farcical but its social implications indicate that this was a community in transition. Historian Ross Wetzsteon argues that the actions of Drick and her friends were a reaction to the greater socio-political shifts occurring in Greenwich Village during the 1910s, “all accounts agree that this mock session symbolized the Golden Age of the Village rebellion, against middle-class, puritan, capitalist America”5. The bohemians understood that their mores were radically different than those held by the rest of the country, and it is unsurprising that they desired to be part of a political state that reflected their social values. Perhaps Luc Sante states it best when he says that the mock Revolution of 1917, “actually named the thing that all the inhabitants of Greenwich Village bohemia of that time were aiming for, a revolution in more than just a legislative sense, a free territory untrammeled by convention”6. Indeed, The Free And Independent Republic Of Washington Square has had at least one lasting impact on Greenwich Village, as evidenced by the now ever-present lock on the West pier of the Washington Square Arch7.
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I'm not sure of the collusion that you mention. It might be helpful to make this clear and to make Wilson's quote immediately relevant for Greenwich Village. Also I'm not sure that collusion is the best word to use here. "Collusion" isn't very common and might cause confusion in this context.
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The transition from Paragraph 1 to Paragraph 2 could be smoother. As a reader unfamiliar with this event, I don't know what Drick is planning until halfway through the second paragraph. It's good that you provide historical context, but I also just want to know what it is that I'm reading about.
Is Drick's depression necessary to her characterization? if so, then take that reference out of the parentheses. If not, then take that reference out entirely.
For first-time readers, it might be helpful to give a quick description of Bohemia.
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Why is oppression in quotes? Either the oppression is real, or you should use a different word.
Edit: "drick was not the first to try"
Edit: "machine gun" is two words, i believe
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Your description of the event here has an attractive flow.
Again I don't prefer the use of parentheses here. If something is important to the story, integrate it properly into the text, or don't use it at all.
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I think that your conclusion could use more analysis. The quotes you've provided are illuminating and relevant, but you could provide more of your own discussion of the event and its ramifications for the Village.
You open with the Woodrow Wilson quote and a brief thematic mention of war and national solidarity. You could expand on these topics and tie your conclusion more clearly back to this introduction. A more substantial conclusion would make the paper more well rounded and convincing.
Overall
Your writing style shows a pleasant and clear colloquialism. Yay public history writing.
Thanks for the great feedback Scott. Particularly on the Introduction and Conclusion, it would make the whole essay stronger if they were tied back to each other and I provided some more of my own analysis. Thanks!
Thank you so much for the links Jacqueline, they were really well done. I love the variety of pages you chose. Each one really added a whole other layer of dimension to the essay. I hope I did as good of a job as you! Thanks again.
There were not very many changes that needed to be made here. I rearranged some sentences, separated some sentences, and combined some sentences. I also changed a few words that were not used properly and inserted some more fitting vocabulary.
Thanks so much for the style edits. I think the essay really benefited from clarifying the subjects in some sentences. I also love the phrase "their late night mischief" that you used, I feel it really encapsulates the events nicely. Thanks!
To be honest, I was concerned that I would find some serious factual errors in my essay because many of the histories that I read of the Free and Independent Republic of Washington Square incorrectly dated the event to 1916. But it seems that my readers largely trusted my research because virtually no facts were changed, the only edits seem to be grammatical clarifications. The peer editing really made me realize that it wouldn't hurt my writing to add a few more nouns and not be afraid of a simplistic sentence structure. Thanks everyone!