Once upon a time in Chelsea, New York, a young woman lived in an apartment on the sixth floor with a magical view. Facing north, there was the Chelsea Hotel, and the Empire State Building, and the spire of the Chrysler Building: stolid, yet ever-changing, amid sunrise or fog, rainbows or fireworks. Directly across the […]
At this time last year, the Metropolitan Opera was aflame in controversy about an opera production called The Death of Klinghoffer. The eight performances between Oct. 20 and Nov. 15 brought waves of accusation and defense, of every political and artistic variety, over this dramatization of a real-life cruise ship hijacking and murder. In that […]
“You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish rye,” was the slogan for a brand of bread baked in Brooklyn, and offered with a memorable ad campaign to the wider world. Well, you also don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy a feast for the senses tomorrow evening, Thursday October 22, when […]
Your input is needed! Today we feature our latest Business of the Month — and we need your help selecting the next. Tell us which independent store you love in Greenwich Village, the East Village or NoHo: just click here to vote for your favorite. Want to help support small businesses? Share this post with […]
This year the city is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Landmarks Law that created the legal framework to preserve for posterity the architectural and scenic treasures that help make our city so aesthetically and culturally rich. In the East Village, two historic cemeteries were designated as individual landmarks in 1969, not long after the […]
What is it about James Baldwin? This writer, long recognized as an important voice in American literature, has been gone for over a quarter-century, yet seems to be speaking incessantly in the country’s ear. He was born in Harlem in 1924, and died in the south of France in 1987, and achieved the kind of […]
Your input is needed! Today we feature our latest Business of the Month — and we need your help selecting the next. Tell us which independent store you love in Greenwich Village, the East Village or NoHo: just click here to vote for your favorite. Want to help support small businesses? Share this post with […]
Today is the second installment of a new occasional series, “The Village Seen,” to display the work of the many talented visual artists in our neighborhoods. Longtime East Villager Patricia Melvin has been painting downtown for more than three decades; you may have seen her stationed outside with her easel near Jefferson Market Library, St. […]
There’s an appealing 1951 painting by Stuart Davis owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, though it’s not currently on view in the new building. Vibrant and memorable, the work is titled “Owh! In San Paõ.” The Whitney explains the unusual name: “…Davis had planned to exhibit it at the 1951 Biennial in São […]
Today we launch a new occasional series, “The Village Seen,” to display the work of the many talented visual artists in our neighborhoods. Longtime East Village resident Dan Efram is a producer, manager and curator in various media, whose sensibilities as a photographer caught our attention. As you can see in full on his Instagram […]
Your input is needed! Today we feature our latest Business of the Month — and we need your help selecting the next. Tell us which independent store you love in Greenwich Village, the East Village or NoHo: just click here to vote for your favorite. Want to help support small businesses? Share this post with […]
East Village activists were surprised to learn recently that the city’s Department of Buildings had issued new work permits for 605 E. 9th Street, the former public school that served as the CHARAS-El Bohio community center for two decades, until it was sold by the Giuliani administration to a private developer in 1998. Since 2001, […]
I recently read the novella Washington Square for the first time, eager to see how this 1880 work by Henry James might paint the Square of olden days. Although the story was absorbing – centering on the relationship between a successful physician and the grown daughter who disappoints him – it didn’t provide quite as […]
Your input is needed! Today we feature our latest Business of the Month — and we need your help selecting the next. Tell us which independent store you love in Greenwich Village, the East Village or NoHo: just click here to vote for your favorite. Want to help support small businesses? Share this post with […]
Think about the neighborhood where you live, whether West Village or East, Astor Place or University Place. Regarding your retail shopping options, if you could pick one of the following as your reality, would it be: Status quo: both independent businesses and chain stores open and close in response to current market conditions Chain stores […]
Your input is needed! Today we feature our latest Business of the Month — and we need your help selecting the next. Tell us which independent store you love in Greenwich Village, the East Village or NoHo: just click here to vote for your favorite. Want to help support small businesses? Share this post with […]
Structures from New York City’s past are leading vibrant new lives all around us every day. An 1878 military drill hall is now an exhibition space for cutting-edge art and performance; an 1865 firehouse serves as a community media center; an abandoned rail line from the 1930s draws throngs of visitors in its second life […]
If you’ve been involved in a movement for going on 40 years, you probably have a few things to say about it. And if you’re as observant and educated about the movement as Anthony C. Wood is about preservation in New York City, those things are probably worth considering. Make that definitely, in Wood’s case. […]
This past Saturday morning, after a cooling rain shower, a gaggle of curious people went traipsing around a handful of community gardens in the East Village. We visited eight gardens, plus the Wilmer Jennings Gallery, in just two hours, hearing from garden members at each one. Members are the people who actually do the work of […]
Your input is needed! Today we feature our latest Business of the Month — and we need your help selecting the next. Tell us which independent store you love in Greenwich Village, the East Village or NoHo: just click here to vote for your favorite. Want to help support small businesses? Share this post with […]
“The Lower East Side is not gone yet,” Ryan Gilliam told the group assembled in the upstairs auditorium of University Settlement on the corner of Eldridge and Rivington Streets, the country’s first settlement house. “Asserting its identity, its history, its stories, and its complex culture is one way to push back at the forces that […]
Reprinted from Gotham Gazette, May 1, 2015. Think of the classic pieces of advice you’ve heard from parents, teachers or mentors along the way in life: Look before you leap. Think before you speak. Consider the source. Sometimes we forget the obvious. This has been the case over the past two years, as an organization […]
A friend of mine – and unabashed New York City chauvinist – has been known to observe a street in Manhattan and pronounce something like, “There’s more style on this one block than in all of Ohio.” (Sorry, Ohio.) Well, if that’s true, then Lower East Side History Month, beginning May 1, has more creativity, […]
It’s that blooming, buoyant, too-brief time of year again, when flowers abound – particularly, this week, the fragrant pink flowers of the saucer magnolia. It was among the branches of just such a tree that a young poet posed for portraits that would become famous. Quintessentially “poetic,” the images of Edna St. Vincent Millay are […]
Your input is needed! Today we feature our latest Business of the Month — and we need your help selecting the next. Tell us which independent store you love in Greenwich Village, the East Village or NoHo: just click here to vote for your favorite. Want to help support small businesses? Share this post with […]
It’s been a heavy spring so far, with troubling news around the world, the nation, and in our city. But the colorful blooms of spring are finally opening – crocuses, daffodils, forsythia, hellebores – and besides, it’s JazzApril. Why not celebrate, if you can? “If I were celebrating JazzApril in the Village I’d do a tour […]
It was just shy of a month ago, on March 5, that a forum called “Solutions to Save Small Businesses, Art and Cultural Institutions” was held at Judson Memorial Church, sponsored by The Villager and Village Independent Democrats. It was attended by an audience fed up with seeing treasured independent businesses driven out by high […]
On March 23, 1896, a law introduced by New York State Senator John Raines was passed by the state legislature, making the sale of liquor illegal on Sundays, except at hotels. The law defined a hotel as a place that served food and had at least 10 rooms to let, so rather than shut down, […]
It’s easy to see, from the many blogs devoted to the subject, that New Yorkers are fans of our local hawks. These raptors add notes of wildness and grace to our busy days, amidst the city’s manmade grit and tumult. Did you know the hawks themselves are fans of notable architecture, as well? Let’s take […]
Your input is needed! Today we feature our latest Business of the Month — and we need your help selecting the next. Tell us which independent store you love in Greenwich Village, the East Village or NoHo: just click here to vote for your favorite. Want to help support small businesses? Share this post with […]
Preservation and rock ‘n’ roll are rarely mentioned in the same breath, it seems fair to say – with at least one notable exception. When the great British rock band The Kinks, one of the most influential groups of the 1960s and beyond, released a concept album in 1968, they didn’t call it “The Village […]
Like many fans, we at Off the Grid were heartbroken when it really happened, after months and years of rumors: De Robertis Pastry Shop closed in December. Nos. 174 and 176 First Avenue were sold, and no one knew what would happen to the soulful storefront. Now there is some hopeful news to report coming […]
Your input is needed! Today we feature our fourth “Business of the Month” — and we need your help selecting the next. Tell us which independent store you love in Greenwich Village, the East Village or NoHo: just click here to vote for your favorite. This article was modified Wednesday, Feb. 25 with up-to-date information on […]
Call him the preservationist’s preservationist: Anthony C. Wood has not only built a distinguished career as an activist for historic preservation in New York City, but has also blazed a singular trail as a historian of the movement itself. He’ll be looking back, and looking forward, at a GVSHP program on Thursday evening, February 19. […]
Not so long ago, there were 57 community gardens sprinkled along the streets of the East Village and Lower East Side – registered with the Parks Department’s GreenThumb program, that is; in total there were even more. Now there are 46. A coalition of gardeners, advocates and officials has just taken action to ensure that […]
Your input is needed! Today we feature our third “Business of the Month” — and we need your help selecting the next. Tell us which independent store you love in Greenwich Village, the East Village or NoHo: just click here to vote for your favorite. Marina Cortez Arrieta, 56, came to America from Peru three decades […]
Your input is needed! Today we feature our second “Business of the Month” — the first one selected by YOUR votes! Now tell us which independent store you love in Greenwich Village, the East Village or NoHo: just click here to vote for your favorite. No. 208 Sullivan Street used to be a place where it […]
Today you may be shaking your head over the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s shocking plan to de-calendar some 100 buildings from landmark consideration. But there’s plenty of good news in our neighborhoods as well. Feel free to send your observations from the sunny side of the street to kloew@gvshp.org. From light poles come sculptures The ongoing […]
Sometimes the riches of what’s given away for free in New York City can feel humbling: We are offered the artistic fruits of musicians, painters and writers at the top of their game, who share their work for the pleasure of sharing, asking nothing more than our attention. One such gift is given each Friday […]
Your input is needed! Today we kick off our new “Business of the Month” feature on independent stores in Greenwich Village, the East Village and NoHo. Tell us which store to highlight next: just click here to vote for your favorite. Behind an understated storefront on busy Third Avenue near 14th Street lies a charming […]
The Village is quiet today, as if enjoying a lull after the storm of elections. After months of predictions telling us the likely outcome, the predictions mostly came true, and it’s over — whether one feels that’s for better or worse. So – a collective sigh. And, in the lull, here’s a gentler look back […]
GVSHP will officially unveil a new historic plaque at the former Fillmore East at 105 Second Avenue on Wednesday, October 29 at 5 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, but we appreciate reservations at rsvp@gvshp.org. About the place I first learned the name “Fillmore” from Grateful Dead bootleg tapes, which, among […]
Have you ever walked by an unattractive building and thought – or maybe heard an innocent ask – “How could they allow that to be built?” Well, unfortunate edifices are allowed to be built because usually there is no “they” – no arbiter of aesthetics for as-of-right new construction outside of landmarked areas (beyond […]
Many Gotham dwellers just about have their spirit broken from all the eclectic, only-in-New-York kinds of places that have been “developed” into achingly boring, everywhere-on-the-globe kinds of places. Unique theaters, gardens, community centers, shops, restaurants: Now they’re chain banks and drugstores and luxury dwellings. It’s enough to make a heartbroken New Yorker give up. Not […]
When you’ve been involved in a struggle since last century – 16 long years – you don’t let an opportunity to celebrate pass by. Some 200 East Villagers, elected officials and others did just that yesterday, on a sunny street in front of a dilapidated building. The building – a grand public school opened in […]
The Hamilton Fish House is a stately home located on lovely Stuyvesant Street in the East Village. It is owned by Cooper Union and serves as the president’s official residence. Should you go there, you can read one plaque designating it a National Historic Landmark, and another one denoting it as a New York City […]
Now in its fourth home, the St. Mark’s Bookshop has become a kind of movable landmark, so it’s fitting that the two-month-old store on East Third Street is in a landmarked building: First Houses, the first federally-funded public housing complex in America. Whether or not they were aware of this historic significance, the customers browsing […]
Are you shaking your head sadly again? You know, that doleful tut-tut about the sweet old building just torn down, or trusty independent business that closed its doors? Well, it’s time to take a break from all that, because there’s plenty of good news in our neighborhoods as well. Welcome to Wonderful Wednesdays. We’d like […]
It was almost sixty years ago that, after changing the course of music forever, Charles Parker, Jr. died at the tender age of 34 in the Stanhope Hotel. Despite being gone for so long now, Charlie Parker’s spirit comes vibrantly to life every summer in Tompkins Square Park. The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival has been […]
Most of us have experienced the surprise and sadness of walking by a favorite business and seeing it shuttered. The reasons for closures are many – including such personal matters as an owner’s simple desire to retire. But other reasons are potentially within our power to change. Here at GVSHP, as one part of […]
One of the most reliable laugh lines from the hilarious current movie Obvious Child doesn’t come from the mouth of stand-up comedians Donna (played by Jenny Slate) or Joey (Gabe Liedman). It’s when the awning of the bookstore where Donna works flashes across the screen, reading: UNOPPRESSIVE NON-IMPERIALIST BARGAIN BOOKS. “Audiences laugh so hard when […]
The “Gilded Age” in New York City – roughly 1870 through 1900 – gets something of a bad rap as a time of overwhelming inequality, when the rich basked in opulence while others were trapped in filth and poverty. (Hm, sounds familiar.) West Villager Esther Crain, author of the historical blog Ephemeral New York, presents […]
Any connoisseur of the East Village worth her salt has heard of C-Squat, a tenement at 155 Avenue C that is one of many buildings that were abandoned by their owners in bleak economic times, only to be homesteaded by squatters in the late twentieth century and eventually rehabilitated into aboveboard housing again, but with […]
A neighbor was having a sale last Saturday to clear out bric-a-brac. My trusty companion and I arrived looking for the advertised guitar, which was already sold, so we left with an armful of books for $6 instead. Among the lode were two Greenwich Village Guides, published by The Villager newspaper. The years 1947 and […]
It may be a hazy West Village memory now, but there was a time in the recent past when some local parks were not the well-kept, well-used green spaces they are today, but sometimes barren or forbidding places. Now Christopher Park — a .19-acre triangle formed by Christopher, Grove and West Fourth Streets — will […]
On a hot summer day in the East Village, when your skin is sticky and the streets are oppressive, there’s nothing quite like escaping into the cool haven of De Robertis Pasticceria and Caffe for an orzata with lemon ice. Since you’re there, you’ll probably go ahead and taste one of the best cannolis or […]
You’re invited to a plaque unveiling and festivities honoring Frank O’Hara on Tuesday, June 10 at 6 p.m. outside 441 East Ninth Street. I am mainly preoccupied with the world as I experience it, and at times when I would rather be dead the thought that I could never write another poem has so far […]
It’s estimated that in 2024, about 36% of New York City’s population is foreign-born, which is one of the highest percentages among U.S. cities. Immigrants also make up 44.2% of the city’s labor force, which is higher than the 64% of native-born New Yorkers who participate in the labor force. The federal Immigration Act of […]
As Mayor De Blasio slowly fills the many leadership positions in a mammoth city government, those of us invested in preservation and development have been waiting for two announcements in particular: of a new Landmarks Preservation Commission chair, which happened today, and of a new Department of Buildings commissioner. About the latter, there has been […]
Do the tall arches of the sturdy red-brick Anthology Film Archives reassure you? Does the stillness of the New York City Marble Cemetery give you a thrill? Perhaps passing exuberant 101 Avenue A, the Pyramid Club, puts a bounce in your step? Well, there’s good news: these unique features of the East Village aren’t going […]
Penny Arcade has been living the bohemian life in New York City, and making art about it, on and off for more than four decades. She says she is “fundamentally a poet,” but also sings, dances, acts, and claims a hand in defining performance art in the 1980s (for which she apologizes in one of […]
Back in high school, I don’t remember History being everyone’s (or was that anyone’s?) favorite subject … but around the neighborhood lately, it definitely is. When a call went out to individuals and organizations in the East Village, Little Italy, Chinatown, and surrounds, to participate in the first-ever Lower East Side History Month, the response […]
Seven years ago, a picturesque swath of lower Manhattan by the Hudson River was listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places. This official designation by government agencies marked another layer of recognition and protection of this unique area, traditionally known for cobblestones, hanging sides of meat, blood in the gutters, brick warehouses, […]
It’s finally warm enough to re-start a new feature, Places We Love, focusing on architectural, cultural and commercial favorites that local folks feel are worth preserving, particularly in the East Village. If you have one you want to talk about, write to kloew@gvshp.org. Beth Sopko has lived on East 8th Street in a handsome 1902 […]
Bob Holman has been making poetry downtown for over 25 years. Among his many endeavors, he is perhaps best known locally as the impresario of the Bowery Poetry Club, founded in 2001 and morphed into Bowery Arts + Science last year. He is the author of 16 works of poetry. We’re delighted that Holman is […]
It seems like everyone supports small business — it’s as American as Mom and apple pie. But all you have to do is observe the changing streetscape, or read a website like Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, to know that small businesses are vulnerable things, and can have very short lives in New York City. A […]
Anita Lo serves two of the things people need most: food and stories. Chef and owner of the esteemed Village restaurant Annisa, Lo is also a contributor to Greenwich Village Stories, the anthology of art and prose to be released by Village Preservation and Rizzoli later this month. You can pre-order the book here, or […]
So there I was, innocently paging through the New York Times Real Estate section this past Sunday — I know you were, too, dreaming about the $2.5 million Mercer Street loft splashed on page 3 — when a pesky contradiction that’s been buzzing around the world of preservation and development landed right on my nose. […]
The British poet W.H. Auden, a towering figure of 20th century letters, is not the first person you’d put in a shabby apartment on St. Mark’s Place. Yet there he lived, at number 77, from 1953 until 1972 when he and his lover Chester Kallman left for a cottage at Oxford. He died in 1973. […]
Have you ever noticed a rowhouse or tenement that’s almost handsome? Something … is … off. Oh! That’s what it is: Its top is shorn. Where a decorative cornice once hung, now there’s a blank — or worse, metal flashing. Why must perfectly decent architecture be diminished in this way? Money, says Robert Perl, the […]
The structure that architectural historian Francis Morrone calls “one of the most important buildings in the East Village” is on the market for $14 million. It’s also set to be considered for city landmark designation this spring. On the first day of October, East Villagers awoke to the news that Tifereth Israel, the Town & […]
Tompkins Square Library opened at 331 E. 10th Street, on the northern edge of Tompkins Square Park, on December 1, 1904. Like many of the New York Carnegie libraries, it is a handsome McKim, Mead and White building (designated as an individual landmark in 1999) that looks almost exactly today as it did then. It […]
Here at GVSHP, we’ve been poring over the new South Village Historic District designation report, and it has some wonderful facts and even a few surprises we thought we’d share. Earlier this month, New York State Supreme Court Justice Donna Mills delivered great news by announcing her legal decision that several of the pieces of […]
On some level, whether it’s top-of-mind or just part of the mental wallpaper, the consciousness of a Greenwich Village lover is often occupied with mourning. You walk the ever-changing streets past the locations of the café you used to love, the bookstore you admired, the theater you always wanted to go to, or that mysterious […]
Today we take for granted that every building has an architect behind it. You need an architect to create a blueprint, right? Then an array of engineers, craftsmen and laborers follow the plans, and voilà, you have a building. In New York City, it wasn’t always so. Today “starchitects” are having their moment, but it […]
The holidays are behind us, and a stretch of short days and long nights lies ahead. Whether you have items to exchange for something you really want, or simply find yourself seeking entertainment to while the winter away, we can offer a few media suggestions for the armchair urbanist. The year now past included notable […]
Oh, if only Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s administration hadn’t auctioned off P.S. 64 to a private buyer back in the sultry days of July, 1998, a whole decade and a half ago. The community center called CHARAS/El Bohio that improved and inhabited the historic 1906 schoolhouse would not have gone homeless for 12 years (after finally […]
Dawn Powell lived in Greenwich Village and wrote about it as well as or better than anyone. A fiction writer, playwright and essayist who has attained the cult status of “a writer who should be much better known,” Powell was born in Ohio in 1896, made it to New York City as a young adult, […]
There’s a residential building under construction on Third Avenue in the East Village that doesn’t get much love in the blogosphere. It’s just another luxury residence replacing older buildings with character (plus a parking lot), the naysayers say (though 20% of the units will be reserved for low-income tenants). And they have a point. […]
Today we introduce a new feature, Places We Love, focusing on architectural and cultural favorites that local folks feel are worth preserving, particularly in the East Village. If you have one you want to talk about, write to kloew@gvshp.org. “Although I don’t know where my career will take me, I would like to live in […]
Mr. Mayor, don’t forget the Landmarks Preservation Commission! Amid lobbying on higher-profile issues like stop-and-frisk, public schools, economic inequality and even animal cruelty, the mayor elected Tuesday may not have shaping one of the smallest mayoral agencies atop his list of to-do’s. Yet implementing a couple of relatively easy, thoughtful changes could improve operations of […]
If the “art deco masterpiece” that is 570 Lexington Avenue no longer stood on the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 51st Street, perhaps affordable housing could be constructed in its place. But this “suave fantasy of polished marble and modern metals,” built in 1931 for the Radio Victor Corporation and since known as the […]
Here in the world of preserving worthy buildings, there’s a question that often comes up. “Preserving buildings is well and good,” people say. “But what about preserving the personalities and pursuits that occupy those buildings?” That’s the next frontier. For the most part, meatpackers are mostly gone from the Meatpacking District, few struggling artists still […]
For stalwarts of the affordable housing scene in New York City, what obstacles come to mind that block the path to construction of new affordable units? We asked a few experienced hands, and they said the cost of land, construction and operations, as well as less access to capital at the outset of a project. […]
On this day one year ago, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission officially designated the East Village/LES Historic District. Encompassing 325 buildings and 15 blocks, centering along Second Avenue and stretching between East 2nd Street and St. Mark’s Place, it is by far the largest historic district designation in the neighborhood, and encompasses much of the […]
