Village Preservation’s Oral History Project includes interviews with some of the great artists, activists, business owners, community leaders, and preservation pioneers of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. It captures and preserves their first-person perspective on the important histories they witnessed or of which they were a part.
Click here for an alphabetical list of our entire Oral History Collection.
The views expressed by the contributor(s) are solely those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or endorsement of our organization.
Chino Garcia (1947-2026) was a Lower East Side/East Village community activist. In this oral history, he discusses his birth in Puerto Rico and movement to New York, his activism as a founding member of the CHARAS–El Bohio Cultural Center, which the City took from the community and sold; his work with renowned poet Miguel Piñero; […]
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The oral history with this icon of the Downtown arts scene and “Queen of the Underground” (b. 1950) covers her life in New York City since leaving home as a teenage runaway. It covers topics from her association with Andy Warhol to the AIDS epidemic, and her work giving voice to female and transgressive sexuality […]
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James Stewart Polshek (February 11, 1930–September 9, 2022) has lived in Greenwich Village since 1955, and his career as an architect has included buildings across the globe. His work in Greenwich Village has focused on complementing the neighborhood’s historic architecture, scale, and character. Notably, he designed the Washington Court apartments, completed in 1985. He was […]
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