In January of 1917, a group of young artists; actors, poets, and painters climbed the Washington Square Arch in the dead of night, to declare secession from the nation, and to proclaim the neighborhood as the “Free and Independent Republic of Greenwich Village”. The artists, or Arch Conspirators , as they would become known as, released balloons and shot cap guns off the top of the monument, a moment considered to be foundational for Greenwich’s status as the artist capital of New York. The...