But it is still the Village, and utterly different from the rest of the city.
Not all the commissioners in the world could change the charming, erratic plan of it; not the most powerful pressure of modern business could destroy its insistent, yet elusive personality.

The Village has always persistently eluded incorporation in the rest of the city.
Never forget this: Greenwich was developed as independently as Boston or Chicago.

It is not New York proper: it is an entirely separate place.

At points, New York overflows into it, or it straggles out into New York, but it is first and foremost itself.

It is not changeless at all, but its changes are eternal and superbly independent of, and inconsistent with, metropolitan evolution.
There was a formative period when, socially speaking, the growth of Greenwich was the growth of New York.