We’re proud to share the latest collection to be added to our Historic Image Archive. Our new Riccardo Spina Collection shows photos from a longtime resident who was born in Greenwich Village in the 1950s and raised in the neighborhood before eventually moving to the Netherlands. This intimate view of Greenwich Village and New York City shows Riccardo and his family (descendants of Italian immigrants who arrived in the Village in the 1890s) on their tenement rooftop and in Father Demo Square when he was a baby, and later shows a very personal perspective on the neighborhood in the 1970s, from the devastating Blizzard of 1978 to an insider’s view of Cafe Figaro where he worked. You’ll love this look back in time to a neighborhood which will seem so familiar, and yet so different. 

We’re also honored to share even more images from historian, researcher, and photographer Susan De Vries. We’ve expanded her recently added collections with even more images from her surveys and work in the 1990s to document the historic but rapidly disappearing Federal Houses (1790-1835) and architecture of Lower Manhattan. 

Village Preservation’s Historic Image Archive contains nearly 4,000 images of our neighborhoods and landmarks throughout New York, from the late 18th to the early 21st centuries. Many of the images have been donated by people like you willing to share their personal collections, while others were donated by renowned photographers. You can explore the entire collection HERE, and you can donate images to us HERE.