As every New Yorker who spots a celebrity at Duane Reade knows, thousands of art and pop culture luminaries have called the city home. From Whitman to Warhol, this is a quick guide to the places notable New Yorkers have lived and worked.

While Manhattan's streets were largely laid out with the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, this grid system was only implemented between Houston and 155th Streets. The plan left Greenwich Village with its long-established mews, alleys, and courts, many of which date to the city's early colonial period, intact. While not exclusively in the Village, most of the secret streets on this list are located there among the organically developed 18th-century street plan. While some changes have come to these streetscapes in the last century, in most cases their concealment and a healthy dose of historic preservation work have aided in their continued survival in the 21st century.

Every year millions of tourists make their way to New York City. While many of them may bypass the Village to flock to Times Square or the Statue of Liberty for a photo, there are many spots here that have gained popularity as a top spot to Instagram. Many of the popular spots draw tourists with their pleasing aesthetics. But often these traveling shutterbugs know little about the vast amount of history behind the sites. So for our many visitors, today we provide some history of some of the spots they use as a backdrop for their social media feeds.

Washington Mews, with No. 1 Fifth Avenue rising in the background. May 3, 1934. The 18th-century ship’s captain Richard Randall had a vision for what would become of his Manhattan country estate after his passing: in his will, he stipulated that his land, a large tract north of present-day Washington Square Park, be converted an institution for elderly seamen. After Randall’s death in 1801, rather than convert the increasingly valuable Manhattan real estate into geriatric housing, his heirs elected to fund the development of Sailors’ Snug Harbor on Staten Island by leasing Washington Square parcels for residential development. Washington Mews became a row of carriage houses for larger residences on Washington Square North and East Eighth Street. After carriage use declined in the early 20th century, Sailors’ Snug Harbor converted some Mews buildings to artist studios. The sculptor Paul Manship, whose “Prometheus” is installed at Rockefeller Center, lived for a time at No. 42 (at right). Today, the Washington Mews carriage houses are faculty residences for New York University.