A Fresh Lens on Village Theater: Discovering Live Stages in the New GVHD Map
Village Preservation recently released an updated version of our Greenwich Village Historic District Virtual Maps. Originally released in 2019, it was created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Greenwich Village Historic District (GVHD). The map includes 23 themed tours and offers a rich, navigable tapestry of the district’s architecture, history, and, crucially, its vibrant theatrical legacy. The theaters of the district are particularly significant in the annals of American theater history, as they were the incubators for the Birthplace of Modern American Drama.
The newly updated Greenwich Village Historic District Virtual Map brings to life — in vivid detail — the heart of Greenwich Village’s theatrical heritage. Whether you’re a longtime Villager or a curious visitor, the map offers more than coordinates: it offers stories. With hundreds of buildings covered, and dozens of themed tours including one focused exclusively on “theaters,” the map invites you to explore the places where live performance has flourished and a truly American form of theater was established. Let’s take a stroll through some of the theatrical houses of the GVHD that still exist today.
The Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street
The Cherry Lane Theatre, located on Commerce Street, a crooked street in the heart of Greenwich Village, was the brainchild of poet, playwright, actress, and Villager Edna St. Vincent Millay. While most famous as a poet, Millay was originally a member of the Provincetown Players, the group that began the Provincetown Playhouse. Millay moved away from that group in 1924 to form her own experimental theater at the Cherry Lane with a group of local artists. The space they chose was a former brewery and box factory, which dated back to 1836. The plot of land had belonged to the Gomez family farm, and on that particular parcel stood a silo prior to it becoming a brewery. Since its incarnation as a theater, it has been home to some of America’s most innovative movements in that field. The Cherry Lane claims to be the space where “Off-Broadway” was born.
Over the decades, Cherry Lane earned a reputation for championing experimental, avant-garde theater— a stage for emerging voices and bold new works.
In 2023, the theater was purchased by the studio A24 — and following renovations, Cherry Lane reopened in 2025 with updated seating and amenities.
Cherry Lane’s history and its continuing excellence and mission to create and break boundaries in the theater make it essential, in the past, present, and future, for anyone using the GVHD map to explore Village theater.
The Lucille Lortell Theatre, 121 Christopher Street
The Lucille Lortel Theatre was originally built in 1926 as a 590-seat movie theater called the New Hudson, and was later known as Hudson Playhouse. It began its life as an off-Broadway theater in 1953 and was called Theatre de Lys. It was famously the place where Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s “The Threepenny Opera” opened in 1954 and, but for a very short hiatus, played until 1961 — a record-setting run at that time. In 1955, financier Louis Schweitzer acquired the building as an anniversary present for his wife, actress-producer Lucille Lortel. In 1981, the year of her 81st birthday, the theater was renamed in her honor.
Its long history of theatrical staging reflects the evolution of the Village as a home for serious, professional theater beyond mainstream Broadway.
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, 224 Waverly Place
St John’s in the Village Church suffered a catastrophic fire in the 1970s, destroying the previous church building on this site. The congregation decided to build a new church along with diverse performance and exhibition spaces to conform with its newly created mission statement which committed St. John’s “to facilitate a continuing dialogue between the Christian faith and the artistic professions, acknowledging in this encounter that we share in common the enterprise of interpreting life, of advancing the quest for truth, and of reaching a fresh vision of reality.”
The theater space at 224 Waverly Place has been home to Rattlestick Theater since 1994. Founded by Gary Bonasorte and Davis van Asselt, Rattlestick is an Obie-Award winning theater that has developed and produced over 100 World Premieres in the past 28 seasons, including St. Vincent’s Project: Novenas for a Lost Hospital, an immersive play which Village Preservation is very proud to have been a partner in creating. It premiered on September 5th, 2019.
Greenwich Village has long been more than a neighborhood; it has been a cultural laboratory. The venues above show how the Village nurtures new voices, supports bold works, and keeps the spirit of experimentation alive. These are just a few of the theaters on our Greenwich Village Historic District theaters tour, which is just one of more than twenty tours on the map.
With the updated GVHD map, the stories of these theaters; their buildings, communities, and productions, aren’t hidden away in dusty archives. They are visible, navigable, and very much alive!
Explore this tour and many more on our Greenwich Village Historic District StoryMap, and check out our 20 other maps on Greenwich Village, East Village, and NoHo here.