On August 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon announced his resignation, effective noon the following day. Following months of impeachment proceedings, Nixon could read the writing on the wall that his time as President would be coming to an end, one way or another. There were several prominent Villagers who played key roles in the push […]
This is one in a series of posts marking the 50th anniversary of the designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District. Click here to check out our year-long activities and celebrations. The streets, parks, and squares of the Greenwich Village Historic District are named for a unique collection of historical figures. In honor of the […]
In the 1930s, today’s East Village and Lower East Side, long the country’s most crowded and notorious slum, was being dramatically transformed. The nation’s first federally-subsidized public housing was being built. Immigration from Europe, once the neighborhood’s lifeblood, had been cut off by restrictive laws, though new laws granting citizenship to residents of Puerto Rico […]
This is one in a series of posts marking the 50th anniversary of the designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District. Click here to check out our year-long activities and celebrations. The streets, parks, and squares of the Greenwich Village Historic District are named for a unique collection of historical figures. In honor of the […]
On June 11th, 2019, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated seven buildings in the area south of Union Square as individual landmarks. While these seven buildings are just a fraction of a fraction of the buildings we called for to be landmarked in connection with the City’s shady Tech Hub “deal”, and […]
Architect Stanford White (November 9, 1853 – June 25, 1906) designed many of New York City’s most beautiful Gilded Age buildings, including the Washington Square Arch and Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village and NoHo’s Cable Building, as well as other landmarks like the Players Club, the Metropolitan Club, Gould Memorial Library, the Bowery Savings […]
To honor and recognize LGBT Pride Month, each year the St. Marks Church-In-The-Bowery produces an art installation along 2nd Avenue between 10th and 11th Street, the Pride Ribbon Project. The installation will be up through the end of June, and we highly encourage you to come to see this in person and read through and […]
The Village Awards recognize the people, places, and organizations which make a significant contribution to the quality of life in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. The 2019 Awards and Annual Meeting will be held at The New School Auditorium at 66 West 12th Street. The striking 500-seat auditorium, designed in 1931, was designated […]
On June 12th, 2019 we will be celebrating seven outstanding awardees at our Annual Village Awards — RSVP here. Read blog posts about each of our 2019 Village Awardees here. Each year, Village Preservation presents one special Village Awardee with the Regina Kellerman Award. Regina Kellerman was Village Preservation’s first Executive Director, and a passionate advocate for historic preservation. […]
On June 12th, 2019 we will be celebrating seven outstanding awardees at our Annual Village Awards — RSVP here. Read blog posts about each of our 2019 Village Awardees here. The Brant Foundation and Gluckman Tang Architects will receive a Village Award on June 12th for meticulously and thoughtfully renovating a historic building, and bringing […]
The Weeksville Heritage Center, which includes the landmarked Hunterfly Road Houses in Brooklyn, recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise $200,000 needed to meet operating costs. Thankfully, they met their goal.
Christopher Park has been a community gathering place and green oasis in the urban landscape of Greenwich Village for 180 years. In recent decades it has also become a hub and focal point for the LGBTQ community. When the park was neglected, the volunteer organization Christopher Park Alliance (CPA) stepped into the breach. Since its […]
On May 1, 1931, the Empire State Building opened on 34th Street and 5th Avenue. At 102 stories and 1,250 feet, it was the world’s tallest building from 1931 until 1973. While it is no longer the tallest building in the world or even New York, it nevertheless remains a symbol of the city and one of the world’s most iconic structures.
This is one in a series of posts marking the 50th anniversary of the designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District. Click here to check out our year-long activities and celebrations. The streets, parks, and squares of the Greenwich Village Historic District are named for a unique collection of historical figures. In honor of the […]
This is one in a series of posts marking the 50th anniversary of the designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District. Click here to check out our year-long activities and celebrations. The streets, parks, and squares of the Greenwich Village Historic District are named for a unique collection of historical figures. In honor of the […]
On April 1, 1966, the Velvet Underground and Nico began their residency at 19-25 St. Mark’s Place in the space that would become the Electric Circus, as part of Andy Warhol’s ‘Exploding Plastic Inevitable.’ It was this month-long series of performances, attended by a who’s who of Downtown’s avant-garde and Uptown’s glitterati, which perhaps more […]
The East Village is generally credited with being the birthplace of punk music, which emanated from CBGB in the mid-1970s and the bands who played there, including the Ramones, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and the Dictators. The music’s roots also can be found in the neighborhood, especially from bands like the Velvet Underground […]
On March 18, 2008, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) approved the designation of four East Village landmarks, and they were as varied as the East Village itself. They were the Webster Hall and Annex at 119-125 East 11th Street, the Children’s Aid Society Elizabeth Home For Girls at 307 East 12th Street, the (Former) […]
On March 12, 1651, Peter Stuyvesant, Director General of the Dutch West India Company, purchased Bouwerie (Dutch for ‘farm’) #1 and part of Bouwerie #2 in what is today’s East Village and surrounding neighborhoods. While it only remained farmland for a fraction of its existence, the land between present-day 5th and 20th Streets, from Fourth […]
From the mid-19th through the early 20th century, the East Village was the center of what came to be known as Kleindeutschland, or “Little Germany” – the largest German-speaking community in the world outside of Berlin and Vienna. It contained countless houses of worship, social halls, labor and community organizations, charitable institutions, and eating and drinking […]
GVSHP launched our blog Off the Grid on February 25, 2011, to share news, research, viewpoints, and historic information about our neighborhoods and beyond. Since then, we have written over 2,000 blog posts (wow!). In honor of our 8th Anniversary, we wanted to look back at our most popular blog post of each year:
On February 19, 1974, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to designate 203 Prince Street an individual landmark. This three-story house with red Flemish bond brickwork and brownstone basement was built in 1833-34 in a transitional style between Federal and Greek Revival. In 2016, GVSHP got the house and about one hundred seventy-five neighboring structures landmarked as […]
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The Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year is one of the most celebrated holidays in the world. February 5th, 2019 ushers in the Year of the Pig, the last year in the 12-year Chinese zodiac calendar-cycle. While most of the New Year’s festivities take place in Chinatown, we thought we would highlight some of our […]
British-born architect Richard Upjohn was born on January 22, 1802 in Sheffield, England. He moved to the United States in 1829, and in 1835 designed his first of many churches throughout the United States. He would go on to design over 50 churches in the Gothic Revival and Italianate styles across the country throughout his almost forty-year career. […]
On January 10th, 1750, James Varick was born into slavery in upstate New York. Possibly a slave of the prominent Dutch Varick family, as a young boy he and his mother were freed and moved to New York City. The church he helped found, what would grow to be Zion African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, had a profound effect on […]
Last week we looked at readers’ top five choices of 2018. Today, check out some of our favorites : Who Doesn’t Love Carole Teller? A resident of the East Village for over fifty years, Carole Teller so beautifully and thoroughly documented her neighborhood’s architecture, daily life, and many quirks, that we had to dole it out in multiple parts […]
Each year GVSHP writes almost 250 blog posts, with our staff (the authors) competing to write the best, most popular posts. Today, we look back on our five most popular posts of 2018, as chosen by our readers:
The Village in the 1960s was a hotbed of creativity. In one of the most defining moments of that decade, in January 1961, a twenty-year-old Bob Dylan moved here to play the clubs and become a recording artist. Photographer Fred W. McDarrah was the photographer behind the Village Voice at the time. McDarrah had a […]
The Center For Migration Studies has provided GVSHP with historic images in the past, and recently sent us several images of the interior artwork of Our Lady of Pompeii church. The church has stood on the northwest corner of Carmine and Bleecker Streets since 1928, but the congregation dates back to 1892, when Father Pietro […]
GVSHP just added 29 new historic images to our archive taken from current public applications to the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) for significant changes to landmarked buildings in our neighborhoods. Historic photos are typically included in applications to provide explanation or context for proposed changes in historic districts or to individually landmarked structures, and GVSHP […]
“For all of us who were worried that the conservative backlash in this country would bring about unnamed terrible things, the future is now.” These words date to November 1980, and were written by activist and journalist Andy Humm following the mass shooting at the Ramrod bar on West Street in Greenwich Village on November […]
Mass transit emerged in New York City in 1827 with the omnibus, a large stagecoach pulled by horses that could accommodate about a dozen riders at a time. While horse-drawn carriages had always existed in NYC, the omnibus was different because it ran along a designated route and was a more affordable option. “Omni” meant the bus carried everyone […]
On Monday, October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy a.k.a. “Superstorm Sandy” made landfall in New York. It was one of the most devastating natural disasters to ever hit New York. It inflicted $19 billion in damages and killed 43 people in New York City. Many neighborhoods in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens were flooded by the 14-foot storm […]
GVSHP has partnered with the free Urban Archive App over the past year to share our historic image archive via this location-based tool. As part of this partnership, we conducted scavenger hunts in the East Village and Greenwich Village, and created guided walking tours of the Bowery and Meatpacking District. Now we’re sharing the opportunity […]
Last week we solved one of our longstanding historic photo mysteries, when Eric Robinson, the cousin of the photographer, Carole Teller, was able to identify the location of this elevated train which had been demolished almost fifty years ago. Many of the images we receive as donations to our historic image archives are unidentified in terms of […]
GVSHP’s historic image archive reflects an amazing cross-section of NYC history. Many of the images arrived to us unidentified in terms of location. We have solved many historic photo mysteries including identifying the location of this one at 15 Carmine Street, this one on St. Marks Place and 2nd Avenue, and these South Street Seaport images. However, a few mysteries […]
GVSHP partnered with the Village Alliance and Urban Archive to host a scavenger hunt in the Village on September 15, 2018. One team got all 30 questions right – can you match their knowledge of the Village? We’ll give you the first one free- it’s the meeting spot of the Scavenger Hunt at Washington Mews. Now you […]
The number “343” is indelibly linked with September 11, 2001 — the official number of firefighters killed on 9/11. However, a 344th New York City firefighter was killed at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. His name was Keith Roma, and he was a 27-year old Staten Island firefighter who worked for the […]
In the early 2000’s GVSHP conducted research that led to the designation of the Gansevoort Market Historic District. That research included photo surveys of the area. We recently added one such photo survey to GVSHP’s Historic Image Archive covering the northern area of the district above 14th street including the Chelsea Market, the old Nabisco factory, and the High […]
Last week we put out a call for help to solve mysteries regarding the locations of some images from our Historic Image Archive‘s most recent addition, Carole Teller’s Changing New York, Part 4. Some were solved this week by readers, and some by staff. Some still remain unsolved… if you think you know the location of any of […]
We recently unveiled the new addition to our Historic Image Archive, Carole Teller’s Changing New York, Part 4, which includes about two hundred fifty images of Greenwich Village, the East Village, NoHo, the Lower East Side, and everywhere from Times Square to the Financial District from the 1960s to the 1990s. Between Carol’s memory and our […]
Last week we shared an online Historic Bowery Walking Tour. This week we are sharing a walking tour of the Gansevoort Market Historic District, landmarked in 2003 thanks to efforts by GVSHP. Back in 2002 GVSHP wrote: “Gansevoort Market is one of Manhattan’s defining neighborhoods – gritty, hard-working, low-rise, with its own special character, and a rich collection […]
The Bowery is Manhattan’s oldest street, predating European settlement. We don’t know exactly when native Americans first began to use this path. We do know that in those early days it was called the Wickquasgeck Road because it led to a settlement of people bearing that name. Following European settlement, the Dutch established a set […]
On this date in 1804, just five days following his infamous duel with Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr sold two plots of land in our neighborhood. Why? Well, he was charged with multiple crimes in New York and New Jersey following the duel, including murder, and he would end up avoiding both states for many years (those charges […]
As we add images to our Historic Image Archive, we try to provide as much identifying information as possible on each one. Sometimes the images come to us with the exact location of the image, date, etc. Sometimes they come with no information whatsoever, and we have to comb our files, mental and otherwise, to try to […]
Theater for The New City (TNC) was founded in 1970 and has served its community with a wide variety of programming for nearly fifty years. TNC has premiered nearly one thousand new American plays and won more than forty OBIE Awards. Co-Founder Crystal Field has led the incredible institution since its founding. And on June 6th, […]
Ralph Lee directed the first Village Halloween Parade in 1974 in conjunction with the Theater for the New City. This mile-long theatrical production of masked performers, giant puppets, musicians, and other flamboyant characters took on a life of its own. 45 years later, the parade has become an annual extravaganza with a reported 60,000 participants […]
The Comedy Cellar is one of the most iconic comedy clubs in the world if not THE most iconic. This family-owned business is also one of GVSHP’s 2018 Village Awardees.
Anthology Film Archives is an international center dedicated to the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema. GVSHP is proud to honor Anthology Film Archives with a 2018 Village Awards at our upcoming June 6th Annual Meeting & Award Ceremony. Click here for more information about the event and […]
Over the past 28 years, GVSHP has honored the unique and outstanding people, organizations, places, and business that make the Village what it is with our Village Awards. You can RSVP to this year’s June 6th Awards Ceremony here. This year we will be honoring an amazing group of awardees, each with an incredible story:
Immigrant Heritage Week is held by NYC each year to honor our collective immigrant heritage. Here at GVSHP, we held a walking tour on Tuesday, April 17th to honor that history. On April 17th, 1909, 11,747 immigrants entered the U.S. through Ellis Island, more than any other day in history. If you missed the tour, […]
Within our Historic Image Archive of over a thousand images of our neighborhoods and other parts of New York City, a few mysteries lurk in terms of where exactly a picture was taken. A few weeks ago one such mystery was solved when the location of the 1970s photo of a piragua vendor from our archives below […]
We all know that New York University has an enormous presence in Greenwich Village and the East Village — one that has grown tremendously in recent decades, and is continuing to grow with the construction of their “NYU 2031” expanded campus on the Washington Square Village and Silver Towers superblocks south of Washington Square. The […]
Lucy Cecere, who passed away on March 19, 2011, at the age of 89, was small in stature, but a true giant in a neighborhood of outsized personalities in which she lived her whole life. She was someone who deeply loved her Greenwich Village neighborhood and was willing to fight to preserve it. She and her husband […]
As we approach St. Patrick’s Day, we realized we’ve discussed Irish churches, Irish heritage, Irish parade riots, and have written about cool East Village bars, East Village sports bars, historic bars, many posts on LGBT bars, and bars in general. But we have never done a post to highlight our favorite Irish bars. There is no […]
On March 5, 1967, a rather unusual new arrival made its way to the West Village from way uptown. Decades later, it’s hard to imagine the Village without it. It would be a vast understatement to say that the house currently located at 121 Charles Street is a unique building with a complicated history. Based […]
Over the past six months, GVSHP has participated in the CUNY Corp service-learning program that places students in paid internships throughout the City. GVSHP’s intern, Oluwaseun Eleyinafe, a Lehman College Senior, wrote the post below on Allen Ginsberg and his poem ‘Kaddish.’ As one of the writers at the heart of the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg […]
Over 80 new historic photos taken by Carole Teller were recently added to the GVSHP Image Archive. Every time we add photos to our collection, we uncover some great stories, like when a woman emailed us that her mother was the subject of this photo, a man let us know this is the only existing photo of his grandfather, […]
Born on February 12, 1791, Peter Cooper left his mark on the world as a pioneering industrialist and inventor, and his mark on the Village as a great philanthropist. Cooper began his career as a coachmaker’s apprentice, although he had only one year of formal schooling. He also worked as a cabinet maker, hatmaker, brewer, and grocer. From these humble […]
The presence of banks in neighborhood retail spaces often elicit mixed feelings at best. Typically these tend to deaden the streetscape and are owned and operated by some faceless, distant multinational corporation. But banks also perform an incredibly necessary and important function for local residents. According to americanbanker.com, only 18% of seniors use mobile banking […]
On January 30, 1968, the Velvet Underground released their second studio album, White Light/White Heat. Following the band’s first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, released in 1967, the band parted ways with manager Andy Warhol and vocalist Nico. White Light/White Heat came out several months later to mixed reviews and barely cracked the Billboard 200, hitting 199 for only […]
On January 23, 1917, poet Gertrude Drick, painters John Sloan and Marcel Duchamp, and actors Russell Mann, Betty Turner, and Charles Ellis climbed to the top of Washington Square Arch. Drick read a declaration of independence for the “Free and Independent Republic of Washington Square” with the intent of having a neighborhood free from mainstream convention.
For our first post in this series, we would like to highlight a pair of important and often overlooked landmarks. The Gould Memorial Library and Begrisch Hall are both located in a dramatic hilltop setting on the campus of Bronx Community College in the University Heights section of the Bronx.
On this date in 2016, the Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously voted to designate the final piece of GVSHP’s proposed South Village Historic District, an incredibly important part of our rich history. After a hard-fought, ten-year campaign led by GVSHP, three new historic districts were created including the Greenwich Village Historic District Extension II in 2010, the South Village Historic District in 2013, […]
A film industry location scout with a keen eye for settings, Meredith Jacobson Marciano has been an East Village resident since 1986. An avid photographer with an eye for pop culture, ephemera, and architecture, Meredith captured on film some of her favorite places and the most striking sites she passed in her wanderings through the […]
The Center for Migration Studies of New York is a think tank and educational institute devoted to the study of international migration, the promotion of understanding between immigrants and receiving communities, and to public policies that safeguard the dignity and rights of migrants, refugees, and newcomers. They have a huge archive documenting the early 20th-century South Village Italian […]
Last time we put out a call to the public to help us solve some mysteries in historic photos, we got a great response. While we have identified many of the people and places in the photos on GVSHP’s growing image archive, some still remain a mystery, and therefore we are putting out a call […]
On November 1, 1967, an 8′ x 8′ x 8′ 1,800-pound giant black cube was installed in Astor Place as one of 25 temporary public artworks by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. However, it was so popular that local residents petitioned the City to keep it, and except for its absences for restorations over the past few years, it […]
Since its online release in August, 2017, GVSHP’s Historic Image Archive has been the source of several amazing stories. The recently released Carole Teller’s Changing New York Collection particularly so, perhaps because these images from the 1960s to 1990s cover relatively recent history, and thus many people connected to people and places in the images are […]
Last week Matt Umanov Guitars released the following bittersweet statement: “After fifty-three years of having been in the business of helping so many guitar (and all the other fretted instruments) players have the tools with which to make music, forty-eight of those years at my store here in Greenwich Village, in the great City of New […]
The Sullivan-Thompson Historic District is the Village’s most recently designated historic district, and was designated in record time. We’re happy to report that it has received its new street signs in record time as well. Usually taking several years to install, the brown street signs that indicate an area lies within a historic district were recently installed, […]
Love them or hate them, Friends was an acclaimed television mainstay, winning 69 awards during its eleven year run from 1994-2004. Friends debuted on September 22nd, 1994, with Greenwich Village as its somewhat implausible backdrop. Monica’s apartment, aka the “Friends Apartment”, as well as Joey and Chandler’s apartment, is shown to be 90 Bedford Street, […]
James and Karla Murray are influential artists, small business advocates, and 2015 GVSHP Regina Kellerman Village Awardees. They have captured and preserved scores of Village locales (and thousands of NYC locales). Over 80% of the businesses featured in their first book have gone out of business since its publication in 2008. Their photographs of these storefronts, and the […]
This is an update of a post written by former GVSHP staffer Andito Lloyd. The seminal tome of the Beat generation, Jack Kerouac’s novel, “On the Road,” was published on September 5, 1957. Though written in 1951 on a continuous 120 foot roll of paper it took many years and many revisions to finally get published […]
Though the Village Voice ceased production some time ago, old issues can provide a nice insight into what was going on in the neighborhood and the world in years passed. So today we’re taking a look back at the August 31, 1967 issue, to see how things were looking as the “Summer of Love” came […]
On August 2nd, 1967, MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens was designated a New York City historic district. These 22 homes surround a beautiful private garden oasis, and this was one of the first historic districts to be designated in our area, prior to even the Greenwich Village Historic District in 1969 (only the Charlton-King-Vandam Historic District was designated earlier, […]
On this day in 2007, two historic federal style row houses at 486 and 488 Greenwich Street (between Spring and Canal Streets) built in 1823 by the Rohr family were designated landmarks by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. These two houses were among thirteen federal houses which GVSHP and the New York Landmarks […]
The late poet Larry Fagin was born on this day in 1937, and would have turned 80. Well known in the East Village and poetry circles, sadly Larry passed away in May, 2017. He was a contributor to GVSHP’s book, Greenwich Village Stories, author of numerous books of his own, taught at The New School, was an assistant […]
The infamous raid on the Stonewall Inn occurred at 3am on June 28th, 1969, and was followed by five nights of ongoing protests. These events came to be known as the Stonewall Riots or Uprising, which is considered to be a major turning point in the gay rights movement, or in many ways the birth of […]
“This is my home, and I love it here” Frances Goldin said about the Lower East Side, her home for over 70 years. GVSHP loves Fran (as she likes to be called) and we celebrate her seven decades (!!!) of activism on her birthday (tomorrow), June 22nd. Fran was born in 1924, living in Harlem and […]
The Espionage Act was passed on June 15th, 1917, shortly after the United States entered World War I in April of that year. Its goals included limiting interference with recruitment efforts and preventing the support of enemies of United States during wartime. In his message to Congress, President Woodrow Wilson warned that the war would require a […]
Off the Grid is highlighting our 2017 Village Awards winners in our upcoming June 6th Annual Meeting & Award Ceremony. Click here for more information about the event and to RSVP. Read about other awardees here GOLES stands for “Good Old Lower East Side,” which is an apt name for this group which works hard to preserve the spirit and character […]
On May 15, 2012, 128 East 13th Street was designated a NYC Landmark following a six year effort by Village Preservation. This is one of the rare cases where a great building was saved literally as it faced the wrecking ball. In 2006, plans were released to demolish the property and build seven story condo. GVSHP […]
Join us on Tuesday, June 6th at 6:30 pm for the 37th GVSHP Annual Meeting and 27th Village Awards — RSVP required; click here. Co-hosted by The New School The Village Awards recognize the people, places, and organizations which make a significant contribution to the quality of life in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and […]
Join GVSHP and an amazing lineup tomorrow night at our third annual Comedy Night. We have secured some of the best comics around – this isn’t amateur hour!!! Starting at 7pm (doors open at 6) at the Village Underground, 130 West 3rd Street, join GVSHP and the eight comedians who have graciously donated their time:
NYC has designated this as Immigrant Heritage Week, because on April 17, 1907, more immigrants entered the U.S. through Ellis Island than any other day in history. Today also happens to be the birthday of notable East Village photographer and immigrant Marlis Momber. For these reasons and just because it’s a great read or listen, […]
This was originally posted by Amanda Davis, GVSHP’s former Director of Preservation & Research. It has been updated with new information. New law tenement at 151 Bleecker Street in the South Village. Photo by GVSHP. The 20th century had hardly begun when the New York State legislature signed into law a new act to address […]
Ten years ago today, a chimney at 86 Bedford Street separated from an interior wall and collapsed into the world-famous Chumley’s bar. Chumley’s would never be the same again. The bar (now a restaurant) did recently reopen, in October 2016. According to Architectural Digest, it was updated to “evoke the 1920s glamour of New York’s […]
Today is the deadline for submitting a nomination for the 2017 Village Awards. We have already received many nominations, but we know that you know the perfect unsung hero deserving of an award. Don’t wait, let us know today! Use the easy form below.
Five years ago today, the South Village was named one of the Preservation League of New York’s ‘Seven to Save’ — the seven most important, endangered historic sites in New York State. This major accomplishment followed the landmarking of the first third of the South Village in June 2010, and was intended to bring attention to the […]
The following was originally written by Sheryl Woodruff and posted two years ago. It has been updated with new content. Read the original post here. It seems that on St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish or of Irish descent. The parade winds its way up Fifth Avenue, tourists and locals patronize the many Irish pubs that […]
On March 8, 1968, the Fillmore East opened at 105 Second Avenue. The first night’s lineup of Big Brother & Holding Company, Tim Buckley, and Albert King was the start of a three year run of music legends that included The Who, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Blood Sweat & Tears, The Grateful Dead, Hot Tuna, the Allman […]
Three years ago today, Village Preservation conducted an oral history with Gloria McDarrah, a Village resident for over 60 years and a longtime member of GVSHP. She worked in publishing, education, and for a while in the 1990’s, at the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Gloria has lived in a variety of locations throughout the Village and […]
In 2014, Village Preservation conducted an oral history interview with Veselka owner and Village Preservation Trustee Tom Birchard. Tom is the son-in-law of Veselka’s original owner, who in 1954 bought a candy shop from a retiring Italian couple. It became a destination for the growing Ukrainian population, serving them homemade traditional Eastern European dishes and […]
GVSHP recently released 90 new images on the GVSHP image archive. Almost half of them date to the early years of GVSHP, when we were known as the Greenwich Village Trust for Historic Preservation. In 1982 GVSHP’s then-Executive Director Regina Kellerman planned an archaeological dig at the site of what is now the Sheridan Square Viewing […]
41 years ago today, New York City was a much different place than it is today. By almost every measure it was dirtier and more dangerous. Many viewed the city as inevitably doomed to failure and the decade was a period of decay- failing industries, collapsing infrastructure, enormous budget gaps, and a population net loss of […]
Edward I. Koch served as Mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989, following terms as Greenwich Village’s Congressman, City Councilmember, and Democratic District leader. Koch, a self-described “liberal with sanity”, passed away four years ago today, following several decades living at 2 5th Avenue. Koch previously lived at 81 Bedford Street, 72 Barrow […]
As 2016 fades into memory, we wanted to look back on all that GVSHP accomplished during the year, and what we have to look forward to in 2017. In 2016, GVSHP: Helped lead the opposition against the Mayor’s plans to roll back neighborhood zoning protections, successfully blocking most of the plan and leaving the majority of our […]
The newly designated Sullivan Thompson Historic District designation report was posted last week by the LPC. This week, we will be looking at some of the 157 amazing historic properties included in the district. 83 and 85 Sullivan Street are two of the district’s individually landmarked properties, both of which obtained landmark designation in 1973. […]