Preserving and Honoring Women’s History

For decades, Village Preservation has been advocating for the landmark designation of buildings in our neighborhoods significant not only for their architectural merit, but for the many important layers of cultural heritage present at these sites. We’ve had some great successes, and achieved landmark status for places including:

• 70 Fifth Avenue, a 1912 Beaux Arts-style office building that served as headquarters of the NAACP, of W.E.B. DuBois’ The Crisis magazine, and as the early home of a stunning array of progressive, human rights, and civil liberties organizations.
• 827-831 Broadway, a pair of 1866 cast-iron loft buildings that hold an extraordinary place in the history of modern art, having served as the homes and studios of great art world figures include Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Jules Olitsky, Paul Jenkins, Larry Poons, Herbert Ferber, and William S. Rubin.
• The Stonewall Inn, the first NYC individual landmark to be designated for its LGBTQ+ history.
• And most recently, 50 West 13th Street, recognizing the nearly forgotten Black civil rights pioneer Jacob Day, who owned the house and lived there from 1858 to 1884, and one of his tenants, Sarah Tompkins Garnet, a prominent educator and suffragist.

Yet landmarking buildings for their cultural significance has not always been the City’s priority. For many years since its establishment in 1965, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, and indeed the preservation movement nationwide and even internationally, put much stronger emphasis on preserving architecture than the stories contained within the walls being saved. As a movement, preservation has seen a global shift into the 21st century, and stories of our collective cultural and social histories are now more often being amplified as part of landmarking processes.

At Village Preservation, we’re proud to be at the forefront of this work in New York City and especially in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. We continue to advocate for landmark designation of buildings and places that represent important layers of history.

One of these often underrecognized layers is Women’s History. Village Preservation has generated numerous maps, virtual tours, and other resources that illuminate the many contributions women have made to history in our neighborhoods. These stories, sometimes underrepresented or unacknowledged in their day, should be highlighted and celebrated as integral to the significance of many buildings worthy of landmark designation.

We have been advocating to achieve landmark designation status for many places based on women’s history. One of the most significant examples is our proposed South of Union Square Historic District, for which we’ve repeatedly urged the city to take action. The neighborhood contains a remarkable concentration of sites connected to movements for equality for women and trailblazing women who changed the world. Village Preservation has identified more than 20 such unprotected sites within our proposed South of Union Square Historic District, from the historical headquarters of the NYC Woman Suffrage League, to the home and office of the first woman doctor in America, to the site of early birth-control efforts. You can explore these places on our South of Union Square Women’s History Tour here; none of them are currently recognized by the City or have any protections from demolition or compromise.

Beyond all of these incredible milestones in women’s rights and health care advancements that took place right here in our neighborhood, South of Union Square is equally notable as a cultural hub, with sites connected to Anaïs Nin, Billie Holiday, Audre Lorde, Patti Smith, Martha Graham, and many other pioneering creative women. The neighborhood’s diverse array of buildings also contained dozens, if not hundreds, of artists’ studios from the first half of the twentieth century, and played a crucial role in shifting the focus of the art world from Paris to New York City. An unusually large number of these artists were women, at a time when female artists were still severely underrecognized and unsupported.

Many of these women artists would meet and collaborate at spaces like the Cedar Tavern, where, in one instance, Abstract Expressionists Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, Helen Frankenthaler, and Joan Mitchell formulated the concept for their nearby Ninth Street Show, an event that altered the trajectory of art history and precipitated the shifting of the art world to New York City. Other female artists who lived and/or worked in the area include Jane Freilicher, Isabelle Bishop, Helen Leavitt, Elizabeth Olds, Jo Baer, Selma Hortense Burke, and so many others.

This critical history must not be erased, and you can help us make sure the city takes action to protect these sites. Click here to email city officials urging them to recognize and protect women’s history landmarks south of Union Square.