Newest Library Acquisition
Over the summer we told you about the 1959 Greenwich Village Guide book published under the auspices of The Villager newspaper. This past week GVSHP received a donation to our library which included a 1947 version of the Greenwich Village Guide. This edition features advertisements from some venerable Village businesses and institutions.
Some of the institutions and businesses are still with us today:
This 144-year-old restaurant is still serving up steaks in the Gansevoort Market neighborhood. Recently, they hosted a dinner for those affected by Hurricane Sandy.
Grace Church and Judson Memorial Church are still welcoming congregants to their parishes today.
Unfortunately, many of these places are no longer around.
From 1896 to 1955, Wanamaker’s Department Store served the residents of the Village. To read more about the history of the store and its buildings, visit our earlier blog post about the store.
Built in 1845, the stately Hotel Brevoort stood in this location until 1954, when it was demolished to make way for a 19-story apartment building. Read more about the hotel’s history in the July issue of WestView News.
While we don’t know much about this business, the Washington Square Shop reminds us of the many owner-operated specialty stores in the Village today.
The 1947 Greenwich Village Guide, among many other titles, is part of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation’s library. The library is open to all researchers with an appointment. Visit the GVSHP library webpage to learn more.
It would be so wonderful (and really, so easy) if the library made an entire PDF of items such as this available online. It’s not easy for everyone who is interested to travel to the library. We have the technology now, let’s share these things properly! A wide appreciation of our history will result in more appreciation for preservation.
The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation certainly agrees that it would be wonderful to share more resources online, to help create more of an appreciation for preservation and our neighborhood’s history. However, because most of the items contained in the GVSHP library are under copyright protections, we are unable to provide full copies online. We are working to make the items we do have permission to make available more accessible. For instance, GVSHP’s oral history collection, featuring many stories about the preservation of our neighborhoods, is available online at http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/resources/oral_his.htm. And we will continue to make as many resources available as possible available to the public.
In fact, _all_ of those churches are still around today.