You’re Invited to the Spring House Tour Benefit
The Spring House Tour Benefit is one of my favorite Village Preservation events, and it’s something I look forward to all year. It was the very first event I got to be part of when I joined the team almost two years ago, and it epitomizes a lot of the beautiful things about our neighborhood and this organization.
Each year on the first Sunday in May, several hundred Village Preservation members, supporters, neighbors, and friends get to explore a handful of remarkable homes in Greenwich Village. It’s a day of community and camaraderie, coupled with the chance to see intricate details of our city’s tangible history up close that you’d otherwise never get to witness, as these are private homes. It’s really a special and unique experience.
I admire the care and attention to detail that the owners all give to their homes, from restoration of original architectural features to the curation of their lived-in interiors. And this meticulousness extends to every facet of preparation for the annual Spring House Tour, down to the paper (or PDF) invitations themselves.
The houses and shapes highlighted in the 2025 invitation were inspired by research and drawings done by Evelyn G. Haynes (1909-2001), a preservationist and member of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission during its earliest days. Among other projects, she was instrumental in researching and organizing materials for one of our city’s first historic district designations, the Charlton-King-Vandam Historic District, and related work on Federal and Greek Revival style row houses in the Village. Her collection of photographs, sketches, writings, and other historic materials, largely from the 1960s, was donated to Village Preservation and is part of our Neighborhood/Preservation History Archive.
Within the collection is a series of fantastic line drawings by Haynes, through which she captured historic details of row houses with impressive accuracy. Long before the invention of computer programs like AutoCAD or SketchUp, she meticulously recorded, by hand, architectural features such as projecting door surrounds and the cornices that top off each building. These became the inspiration for the colorful geometric shapes found in this year’s benefit invitation. Haynes’ drawings are now part of a historical record that tells us exactly what these predominantly 19th-century buildings looked like at a certain point in time, mostly prior to landmark designation. And one of her drawings is actually of a house that is on the tour this year!
We don’t disclose the precise locations of the homes included until the day of the tour — in part to protect the owners’ privacy, but also because some of the fun of the day as a participant is gaining exclusive access and finding out where you’ll be headed in the neighborhood. The featured homes are always within walking distance of each other, and every house is distinct and has its own unique features and attributes, both inside and out.
#SpoilerAlert: if you join us this year, you will get to see lushly planted private gardens, an Italianate-style back house, fireplaces with their original marble mantles, historic wood paneling, artwork and vintage furniture imported from Europe, and so much more. We also always secure an historic location for the ticket pick-up, and this year we certainly succeeded: you’re in for a treat with this one!
One other thing I can tell you in advance is that this year’s homes are located in several local historic districts. As usual, a few are within our beloved Greenwich Village Historic District, which was one of the first historic districts to be designated in 1969. An extra special treat this year is that two of the houses featured on the tour are located within the aforementioned Charlton-King-Vandam Historic District, which was designated even earlier, in 1966. There’s also one house in the Sullivan-Thompson Historic District, an especially exciting one for us as that’s one of the districts Village Preservation got designated as part of our broader campaign to extend landmark protections in the South Village.
Funds raised during the Spring House Tour Benefit help support Village Preservation’s mission of education about and advocacy for the distinctive character and irreplaceable architecture of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo.
Click here to secure your participation as an individual supporter, and here to find out more details about the tour and other ways you can support this benefit and our work. We hope to see you on May 4th!