Happy Holidays from Village Preservation — You Make Our Work Possible
Village Preservation’s mission is to document, celebrate, and preserve the special architectural and cultural heritage of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. That means everything from protecting historic buildings and parks, to supporting small businesses and local cultural, educational, and community institutions. It means sharing and honoring a history made up of trailblazers and innovators; immigrants and outsiders; artists and artisans; thinkers and doers.
It’s a history and a heritage that’s irreplaceable, and more relevant now than ever. But it’s also vulnerable, under extreme pressure, and too easily overlooked or erased.
That’s why we’re here — to ensure that these special places, and their spirit, continue.
But we can’t do it without you. Your generosity makes everything we do possible — more than 80% of our support comes from individuals like you.
As we turn the page on 2023 and begin a new year, I hope you’ll consider a gift to keep Village Preservation and our work strong in 2024.
Sincerely,
Andrew Berman
Executive Director
What Village Preservation Does
- We’ve secured landmark designation of over 1,250 buildings, including a dozen historic districts and district extensions, and scores of individual landmarks, across Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo
- We’ve won zoning protections for nearly 100 blocks of our neighborhoods, from the Hudson River to Avenue D
- We monitor every one of over 6,500 buildings lots in our neighborhoods every day for demolition, alteration, and new construction applications, and every one of over 3,500 landmarked properties for applications for changes
- We help support hundreds of local small businesses and cultural and community institutions with our Village Awards, Business of the Month programs, and other small business promotion programs.
- Conduct hundreds of public programs celebrating and sharing the history of our neighborhoods
- Create a myriad of online resources, accessed by over a million people annually, about the history and architecture of our neighborhoods, from virtual tours to image archives, oral histories to our blog, and more
- Serve tens of thousands of young people from across NYC, regardless of ability to pay, in our first-of-its-kind Children’s Education Program.
- Advocate for action by city agencies to address landmark, zoning, and building violations in our neighborhoods
- Track, share, and review scores of applications for proposed changes to landmarked buildings in our neighborhoods every year, so the public can be informed and participate in the decision-making process
- Push for groundbreaking landmark designations that honor civil rights histories, including LGBTQ+, African American, and women’s, and offer resources and programming that emphasize our neighborhoods’ diverse histories and special role in social justice and politically and culturally progressive movements
- Place nearly two dozen plaques marking historically significant sites across Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo
In 2023, We:
- Helped lead the successful fight to prevent Albany and the Mayor from changing long-standing rules to allow supersized development in any residential neighborhood in NYC
- Got NYU’s lawsuit rejected, which sought to overturn zoning protections we secured against its unlimited expansion
- Secured an important role for Village Preservation and other preservation organizations in the oversight of plans to site 32-ft.-tall futuristic 5G towers throughout our neighborhoods, which has already resulted in these towers being rejected
- Led the charge to demand that a planned affordable housing development on City-owned land at 388 Hudson Street is guaranteed to remain permanently affordable, and utilizes a contextually design and scaled rather than the city’s ultra-tall tower plan
- Called out the city for its failures to protect vulnerable buildings at 10-14 Fifth Avenue, 14-18 Gay/18-20 Christopher Streets, and 642-44 East 14th Street, among other locations, from neighboring construction and faulty work, and demanded reforms to its system of oversight
- Protected the iconic 1834 house and backhouse at 131 Charles Street from dangerous excavation and alteration plans.
- Launched campaigns to secure landmark status for endangered buildings like Theatre 80 and the former Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.
- Celebrated six amazing community leaders, nonprofits, and local small businesses at our Annual Village Awards.
- Staged our beloved Annual Spring House Tour for the first time since 2019
- Unveiled plaques honoring honoring jazz icon Charles Mingus and pop art master Roy Lichtenstein
- Conducted candidate forums for our contested local City Council primary elections following the decennial redistricting.
- Served more students than ever in our Children’s Education program, which is open to all schools regardless of need or ability to pay, thanks in large part to the generosity of our members
- Added incredible new online resources like our hip-hop 50th anniversary map, our permanent VILLAGE VOICES exhibition, and several new Historic Image Archive collections
- Conducted more than 80 public programs celebrating and illuminating the history of our neighborhoods