Past Village Awardees: Trailblazing Women in our Community

One of Village Preservation’s most beloved traditions is our Annual Meeting and Village Awards, at which we celebrate our achievements of the past year and honor invaluable leaders, institutions, businesses, places, and organizations in our neighborhoods. Fondly referred to as the “Oscars of the Village,” these awards showcase the remarkable people and places that have made a significant contribution to the special quality of life in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo.

There are only a few days left to submit your picks for this year’s Village Preservation Annual Awards! Through 6pm on March 16th, you can nominate one or more local small businesses, residents, community groups, public spaces, new designs, or restoration by providing your input. You can check out the comprehensive list of past awardees HERE.

The businesses, organizations, and people who have received a Village Award run the gamut, representing the true diversity and variety of institutions in our neighborhood. Today, we will take a look at a small slice of this variety, focusing on some of the incredible women awardees who have made an impact in our neighborhoods. 

2024: Barbara Kahn

2024 Village Awardee Barbara Kahn is an East Village playwright whose work is rooted in the history of New York and that of marginalized groups, with a frequent focus on the experiences of women, LGBTQ+ people, and personal trauma. Since 1994, her award-winning plays have been produced at the Theater for the New City, though she has also produced plays throughout New York, Paris, and London.

Barbara grew up in southern New Jersey, and from a young age pursued acting and playwriting. Early in her career, Kahn moved to New York City and started working on Off-Off-Broadway performances, building her resume as both an actor and a playwright. In 1990, she co-founded Sisters on Stage, a lesbian theater collective, to provide a platform for lesbian plays and playwrights. Theater for the New City invited Kahn to produce a work in 1994, and since then, Kahn has written a new piece at the theater each year.

2024: Penny Arcade

2024 Village Awardee Penny Arcade is an East Village Icon, often known as “Queen of the Underground.” She says she is “fundamentally a poet,” but also sings, dances, acts, and helped define performance art in the 1980s.

Known for her comedic wit, forthright delivery, and stage presence, Penny’s performance life has thrived in legendary downtown venues including LaMama, Playhouse of the Ridiculous, University of the Streets, the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s in the Bowery, Kenny’s Castaways, Theater for the New City, The Bitter End, Barrow Street Theater, and The Actors Playhouse.

A longtime friend of Village Preservation, we have been honored to have Penny as the emcee of many of our Village Award ceremonies.

2022: Jane Friedman and Howl! Arts

The non-profit Howl! Arts has, since its founding in 2015 by Jane Friedman, pursued the noble mission of nurturing the creative culture of the East Village and preserving the rich artistic heritage of the neighborhood. In the last 10+ years, the organization has held hundreds of events and played a major role in helping the East Village remain a hotbed of artistic activity.

Howl! Arts grew out of the Howl Festival, a vital gathering held annually in Tompkins Square Park during the 1990s and early 2000s. As stricter city ordinances complicated the organization of the event, its producer Jane Friedman decided that it would be simpler and more impactful to make the festival a local fixture.

The Howl! Arts gallery space, located at 6 East 1st Street, presents exhibitions of painting, sculpture, video and photography work by artists who lived and created in the neighborhood and by those who still do so. Howl! Arts has presented over 100 gallery shows since its inception, highlighting individuals and institutions such as The Pyramid Club, The East Village Eye newspaper, Ethyl Eichylberger, John Kelly, Lydia Lunch, Godlis, Jackie Curtis, and Punk magazine. These shows have drawn overflow crowds, garnered enthusiastic reviews from local and national media, and become a focal point for the East Village creative community

2021: Linda Pagan

Linda Pagan is not only the owner of the beloved Hat Shop, but is also a small business advocate and preservationist. She opened The Hat Shop in the South Village/SoHo in 1995 and has been using her creative intuition to help build a community network for local artists and residents ever since. 

After opening her shop, Linda quickly became a pillar of the community, co-founding the Thompson Street Business Association, which was instrumental in helping storefronts confront the challenges of 9/11; founding the Milliners Guild as a platform for mutual support among hat-making peers; co-launching SoHo Village NYC, a group that promotes the history of the neighborhood; and helping found Save Our Storefronts, a state-wide group that mobilized in response to the COVID-2019 crisis to secure legislative small business assistance.

COVID proved a challenge for Linda and the Hat Shop, as it did for most small business owners. When she was served a non-renewal from her landlord, which she didn’t take without a fight, she successfully gained an extension on her lease. Because of her stellar reputation in the neighborhood, Linda quickly found a new spot at 148 Sullivan Street, where her shop remains to this day. She continues to steward the thriving community of small businesses in the area, intentionally building community and supporting other business owners.

2019: Hettie Jones

Poet, memoirist, writing teacher, activist for women’s rights, civil rights, and prisoners’ rights, and a proud mother of two, Hettie Jones was a powerful force in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side from the 1950s until her recent passing in August 2024. One of the most prominent women of the Beat Generation, she co-founded the literary magazine Yugen with her then-husband, writer Amiri Baraka. Hettie’s memoir, How I Became Hettie Jones, vividly describes this artistic whirlwind, her challenges as a wife and mother in a bi-racial family during the Civil Rights Era, tensions with her Jewish family, and the challenge of finding her own way as a poet and writer in a literary scene dominated by men.

In addition to her writing, Hettie worked for years on the staff of the Partisan Review. Jones was previously the Chair of the PEN Prison Writing Committee, and from 1989 to 2002 ran a writing workshop at the New York State Correctional Facility for Women at Bedford Hills, from which she published a nationally distributed collection, Aliens At The Border. From 1994-1996, she was a member of the Literature Panel of the New York State Council on the Arts, and subsequently served two terms on the Board of Directors of Cave Canem.

The women highlighted in today’s blog are just a few of the incredible leaders who have received Village Awards. Take a look at the full list here, and nominate your own pick for this year’s Awards here.