What’s So Special About the South Village?

Village Preservation kicked off its campaign to honor, document, and seek landmark designation for the South Village and its remarkable immigrant and artistic histories in December 2006, and completed the effort in December 2016 with designation of the third and final phase of our proposed South Village Historic District, the largest expansion of landmark protections in the neighborhood since 1969. Starting in 2023, we now mark each December as “South Village Month,” to celebrate this special neighborhood south of Washington Square and West 4th Street, and to remember the great efforts of so many to ensure this neighborhood’s preservation. 

So if you’re wondering “What’s so special about the South Village?,” here are just a few of the things:

• It’s home to the oldest parish ever established, and oldest church ever built, for Italian Americans: St. Anthony of Padua Church at 155 Sullivan Street.
  
• In the second half of the 19th century, it was home to the largest African American community in New York, and the center of black life in the city. 
  
• In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it had the largest concentration of establishments catering to LGBTQ+ people in New York, and was the center of LGBTQ+ life in the city. 

• In the 1950s it was the center of the Beat movement in NYC. 
  
• In the 1950s and 60s it was the center of the folk revival in NYC. 
  
• In the 1960s and 70s it was a great center of rock music and performance, launching the careers of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Patti Smith, among many others. 

• It was where Lenny Bruce was notoriously arrested for his “obscene” performances. 

• It’s where many of the great album covers of the 20th century of the 20th century were shot, from “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” to Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush.”

• It’s home to five New York City historic districts, more than a dozen individual landmarks, and an 800-building National Register of Historic Places district that’s one of the largest in New York City. 

• It’s home to hundreds of 19th and early 20th century buildings, with several more than 200 years old, and contains New York’s highest concentration of federal and Greek revival houses, as well as intact early tenements and tenements of every conceivable style and configuration. 

• It’s where the cappuccino was introduced to America, at Caffe Reggio. 

• It’s where Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway theater began, with trailblazing venues like the Provincetown Playhouse, Caffe Cino, and Circle in the Square Theater. 

• It was home to the longest running play in history, The Fantasticks.

• It’s where progressive education began, at Little Red Schoolhouse.

• It’s home to the likely inspiration for Edward Hopper’s iconic painting, “Early Sunday Morning.” 

• It’s where feminists came to argue for social change in the early 20th century at the Heterodoxy Club. 

• It’s where the Rocky Horror Picture Show Midnight show began. 

• Its historic districts are among the city’s first and only to honor immigrant and artistic history.

• It contained trailblazing reform housing developments intended to uplift and shelter poor and working class New Yorkers. 

• It was home to quintessential Villagers Lucy Cecere, who helped found and lead many local social service organizations, and her husband Lenny Cecere, longtime proprietor of beloved local business “Something Special.”

Join us in celebrating all things South Village! Find out more here and here.