Remembering the former Pennsylvania Station
On August 2, 1962, a group of concerned citizens protested in front of Pennsylvania Station, the McKim, Mead, and White Beaux Art structure in pink granite that spanned two full … Continued
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Author: Sheryl
Dog Days of Summer
It’s the dog days of summer here in New York City, so here at Off the Grid we thought we would share some “cool” images from the GVSHP archive.
My Favorite Things: Archive Edition II
One of the most frequent questions we get at GVSHP is where to find historic photographs. We have focused on this topic before here at Off the Grid, but the … Continued
NYU Development Battles Past and Present
The Atlantic Cities featured an article called “A Brief History of NYU Land Battles” on its site this past Tuesday, before the City Council Land Use Committee voted nearly unanimously … Continued
The 1863 Draft Riots and Abigail Hopper Gibbons
As Off the Grid chronicled last year, today is the anniversary of New York City’s draft riots, five days of rioting, looting, burning, and wanton violence that erupted after the … Continued
Greenwich Village Generals
This week, the Fourth of July holiday has us here at Off the Grid thinking about the connections the Village has to the Revolutionary War. While the Village remained a … Continued
Help St. Mark’s Bookshop Win a $250,000 Grant
Off the Grid recently reported on how St. Mark’s Bookshop, the beloved independent bookshop in the East Village that won a GVSHP Village Award in 2007, was able to successfully … Continued
Happy Birthday to Four NYC Landmark Districts
Two years ago today, the Greenwich Village Historic District Extension II, or what GVSHP terms the South Village Phase I District, was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation … Continued
Annual Meeting and Awards Ceremony Pictures Now Available
On Thursday, June 7, GVSHP presented its 32nd Annual Meeting and 2012 Village Awards. The 2012 Awardees and a full recap are all featured on Off The Grid. Be sure … Continued
Villagers Feted at GVSHP’s Annual Meeting and Awards Ceremony
Last evening, 400 guests celebrated the accomplishments of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and eight Village businesses, people, and organizations at GVSHP’s Annual Meeting at The New School’s … Continued
Bleecker Street Sitting Area Renovation: 2012 Village Award Winner
Completed in the spring of this year, the spectacular renovation of the small park at the corner of Bleecker and West 11th streets was the result of a true community … Continued
The Lower East Side History Project: 2012 Village Award Winner
Fourth generation Lower East Side resident Eric Ferrara has always been interested in the history of his community. In 2003, he made his commitment to researching, documenting, and preserving the … Continued
Arturo’s: 2012 Village Award Winner
Arturo’s, best known for its delicious coal-oven pizza, first opened on MacDougal Street in 1957 before moving to its current location on Houston and Thompson Streets in the early sixties. … Continued
Foods of New York Tours: 2012 Village Award Winner
Foods of New York Tours was unofficially launched in 1998 by Todd Lefkovic, a New Jersey native who started coming to the Village in 1977. What began as a sideline … Continued
LREI: 2012 Village Award Winner
Educator, psychologist, and reformer Elisabeth Irwin founded the Little Red School House, an experimental curriculum within PS 61 in the Village, ninety years ago. While the school has grown over … Continued
6th and B Garden: 2012 Village Award Winner
The many community gardens of New York City were developed as the City tore down abandoned buildings in some of the worst neighborhoods and the community worked together to reclaim … Continued
Marilyn Appleberg: 2012 Village Award Winner
It is hard to imagine East 10th and Stuyvesant Streets today without thinking about neighborhood resident and activist Marilyn Appleberg. Marilyn has worked tirelessly as an advocate for the blocks … Continued
The Portico of St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery
Recently, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express announced 40 preservation projects in the running for grants through their annual Partners in Preservation program. This program seeks to … Continued
Congratulations to the 2012 Village Award Winners
On Thursday, June 7th, eight Village businesses, people, and institutions will be presented a Village Award by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.We received hundreds of nominations, and the … Continued
Partners in Preservation Sites Announced
Last week, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express revealed 40 preservation projects up for grants through their annual Partners in Preservation program. This program seeks to increase … Continued
Take a Peek Into Six Greenwich Village Homes
On Sunday, May 6, GVSHP will present its 14th Annual Village House Tour, a benefit that raises funds to support our work to educate about and advocate for the preservation … Continued
A View to a Historic Restoration
Any restoration of a historic site within our neighborhoods is exciting. But when that project is a stone’s throw away from our office space at the Neighborhood Preservation Center, we … Continued
What’s Your Neigborhood “Best Of?”
This spring, Greenwich Village business Your Neighborhood Office was named best “doorman substitute” in 2012 by New York Magazine. We hate to say I told you so, but . . … Continued
Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
This Sunday, March 25, marks the 101st Anniversary of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. The 1911 fire took the lives of 146 workers, mostly immigrant women, inspiring the young … Continued
Two Churches with Irish Heritage in Greenwich Village
With St. Patrick’s Day just this past Saturday, we thought we would take a look at two seminal Irish institutions in Greenwich Village, The University Parish of St. Joseph’s and … Continued
Remembering the Fillmore East
Forty-four years ago today, music promoter Bill Graham opened the Fillmore East at 105 Second Avenue. This 2,600 seat venue hosted concerts from 1968 to 1971, including performances by the … Continued
Little Africa: Tracing African Americans in the South Village
For historic preservationists, who often use the built environment as a major source of information about a community’s past, the hardest stories to capture are those where the physical trace … Continued
Peruse These Village Bookstores
Last year, Off the Grid featured a look at some of the Village’s more specialized bookshops, including shops featuring cookbooks, comics, and mystery books. If you didn’t catch it, be … Continued
Gone But Not Forgotten: Van Nest Place
Walking west along Charles Street, it is hard to imagine that the area bounded by West 4th, Bleecker, and Perry Streets was still rural until the mid-1860s. At the center … Continued
My Favorite Things: Archive Edition
A recent inquiry by a researcher looking to document the emerging folk scene in the Village had me looking through the archive of Robert Otter, a photographer who captured the … Continued
Welcome East 10th Street Historic District
Last week, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to landmark East 10th Street, from Avenue A to Avenue B. So we thought we would welcome our newest district … Continued
Creative Conversion
In an earlier post we cleared up some common misconceptions about landmarking, one of which is the notion that landmarking “freezes a building in time.” Every Tuesday the Landmarks Preservation … Continued
What’s in a Name: Bleecker Street
It is hard to imagine Bleecker Street, with its high fashion boutiques, small businesses, cafes, and food shops as farmland, but then again it is hard to visualize any part … Continued
Welcome Amanda Davis – Village Preservation’s Newest Staff Member
Today we are thrilled to welcome Amanda Davis – our new Director of Preservation and Research – to the Village Preservation team! Among many others, Amanda’s projects will include design … Continued
The Ghost of Preservation Battles Past: The House of Genius
61 Washington Square South, before it was demolished in 1948, was known as the House of Genius, part of the so-called genius row named for the artists and writers who … Continued
Gangsters and Artists on Great Jones Street
We often receive research requests here at GVSHP that ask a very particular question about a particular address in one of the Village historic districts. So when we received a … Continued
In Memoriam, Anthony Amato
Anthony Amato, the founder and artistic director of the Amato Opera, died last Tuesday at the age of 91. Through his company, Anthony Amato created a home for opera within … Continued
Winter Wonderland in Washington Square Park
The settling in of cold weather has us here at GVSHP feeling a little nostalgic for snowfalls past. Images from the GVSHP archive of Washington Square Park covered in snow … Continued
A Christmas television classic grows in Greenwich Village
Chances are you are familiar with the timeless Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which has played on television every holiday season since it first aired in 1964 on the … Continued
Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation Day Declared!
City Council Member Rosie Mendez recognized the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation in its thirtieth anniversary year by proclaiming December 2, 2010 as Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation … Continued
East Village Tenement Housed “the Most Dangerous Woman in America”
Anarchist and revolutionary thinker Emma Goldman, known for her political activism, writing, and speeches, can claim East 13th as her home in the early twentieth century. Goldman was known for … Continued
Thanksgiving Ragamuffins
Thanksgiving has been an unofficial tradition in the US since settlers first came here, an unofficial holiday since 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of giving thanks … Continued
My Favorite Things: The Corner of West 4th and West 10th Streets
Villager’s often point to the neighborhood’s low scale buildings and meandering, off-the-grid street pattern as one of the many factors that make the Village so special. I have to admit, … Continued
When was my building built? and other tricky research questions
The New York Public Library, whose digital gallery we here at Village Preservation turn to quite frequently when looking for images to assist in our own research, recently included an … Continued
Russ & Daughters: An Extraordinarily Ordinary Place
As GVSHP gears up for our benefit evening Much Ado About Noshing this evening with Village writer Calvin Trillin and two generations of the Russ & Daughters family, we decided … Continued
Veselka Bowery Opens Tonight
With GVSHP’s office located on the corner of 2nd Avenue and East 11th Street, staff are very familiar with Veselka, the Ukrainian restaurant/diner on 2nd Avenue and East 9th Street. … Continued
Deadly History
With today being Halloween, we thought we would take a look at … dead bodies in the Village! You can tune out the ominous laughter you may be hearing right … Continued
More Cheese for the South Village?
It seems you can’t miss Murray’s Cheese, the well-known South Village shop devoted to all things cheese, these days. They were recently featured in the New York Times and the … Continued
Remembering CBGB
CBGB, the legendary rock club on the Bowery and Bleecker closed its doors on October 15, 2006, due to lease issues, 33 years after it opened. The last evening at … Continued
Stop the Presses!
As GVSHP announced on its blog last Thursday, we will be hosting a fundraiser in November featuring our own Greenwich Village writer Calvin Trillin, and the 98-year-old appetizing store Russ … Continued
Five Questions for St. Mark’s Bookshop
Recent press has spotlighted a lease negotiation between St. Mark’s Bookshop, the independent bookstore on Third Avenue between 8th and 9th Streets and its lease holder, the Cooper Union. St. … Continued
If These Walls Could Talk: Merchant’s House Museum Edition
As our program schedule attests, we here at GVSHP love a good renovation story. So we were delighted when our friends over at the Merchant’s House Museum sent us pictures … Continued
A Greenwich Village Artifact in Texas
We love receiving research queries here at GVSHP, but never more so than when the person asking the question has something to tell us. So we were quite pleased to … Continued
Labor Day Redux
This Monday most of us will be enjoying a day off, celebrating the last unofficial (long) weekend of summer. This well-deserved holiday makes it a little hard to remember that … Continued
Fourth Arts Block tour redux
This weekend, tour guide Lawrence Frommer and Fourth Arts Block executive director Tamara Greenfield led a tour of East 4th Street between the Bowery and 2nd Avenue for GVSHP. (Want … Continued
Adapting “Adaptive Re-Use”
The term adaptive reuse is used by architects and preservationists to describe the process of adapting old structures for purposes other than those initially intended. Villagers are familiar with the … Continued
What’s in a Name: Bank Street
Sometimes determining the provenance of a street’s name is fairly easy. It is true for Bank Street in Greenwich Village, which was named for … you guessed it … a … Continued
The Illuminated Village
As recent news about the painting over of the sign for the Fat Black Pussy Cat on Minetta Street can attest, historic signs add an important dimension to how we … Continued
On This Day: New York City Draft Riots
On July 13, 1863 began several days of violence in New York City known as the Draft Riots. These civil disturbances rocked New York City and revealed a deep racial … Continued
Pushing the Envelope on Avenue A
While Greenwich Village will always be equated with the Gay Rights Movement, particularly for its role in the series of protests at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, the East Village … Continued
A Peek Back at the Village’s LGBT History
View A Guide to Lesbian & Gay New York Historical Landmarks in a larger map The Village erupted in riotous celebrations this past weekend at the news of passage of … Continued
An Architectural Gem in the Village: 2011 Awardee
While many of our 2011 Village Awardees are located within NYC historic districts, the Church of the Ascension holds the distinction of our only awardee this year that is listed … Continued
Young in Age, but Not in Spirit: 2011 Village Awardee
Over the many years GVSHP has presented the Village Awards, awardees have often been praised for their longevity. Though in rare cases, a newly established organization or business will … Continued
A Specialty Food Shop in the Village: 2011 Village Awardee
McNulty’s Tea & Coffee Company at 109 Christopher Street is a part of a long tradition of Village specialty shops that hint at a time before grocery stores, when shoppers … Continued
Manhattan’s Only Designated Cultural District: 2011 Village Awardee
Did you know that Manhattan’s only designated cultural district is right here in the East Village? The Fourth Arts Block (FAB) will be one of eight recipients of a 2011 … Continued
A Foundry on Jane Street: 2011 Village Awardee
In these modern times, it’s hard to imagine that there could be a metal foundry located on the very residential Jane Street. Well, there is, though it’s hardly a recent … Continued
Pushcarts on Bleecker Street
When former South Village resident Josette Lee emailed GVSHP a picture of her Dad from the 1970’s standing in front of two pushcarts located on Bleecker Street, we became as … Continued
A Sense of Place circa 1950
Nat Kaufman was a Villager and a member of the Village Camera Club. This image of a man with a baby carriage at the Annual Washington Square Art won a … Continued
A Fortuitous Exchange
When the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition asked the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation for help locating original building files for the Brown Building at 23-29 Washington Place, the … Continued