In 2021 and 2022, Village Preservation developed an innovative outdoor public art exhibition that was displayed throughout Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. VILLAGE VOICES featured photographs, artifacts, and soundscape recordings to celebrate and honor the artistic, social, political, and cultural movements that have grown in our neighborhoods, and the people who gave them […]
In our new African American History curriculum for middle school students, we explore how Jean-Michel Basquiat’s art also served as a platform for advocacy, addressing some of the most pressing issues of race and discrimination of his (and our) day. Basquiat was already a successful studio artist when, on September 15th, 1983, events transpired in […]
Didn’t make it to a recent GVSHP program? Visit our website to see photos, videos, and sometimes even presentation materials from recent programs. Photos and video from Saturday’s Basquiat and NoHo panel are now online! This past Saturday, just two doors down from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s last home and studio, GVSHP and Ayanna Jessica Legros presented a panel exploring the artist, his identity, and […]
Jean-Michel Basquiat, born December 22, 1960, may have lived just 27 short years. But in that time he created a language of art which may resonate more than ever today, and became in many ways the quintessential late 20th century downtown artist.
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s life and work are synonymous with the East Village/NoHo art scene of the 1980’s. From his early years as a burgeoning young artist while studying at City-as-School, a progressive high school Village Preservation proposed for historic district designation which operates on the principles of John Dewey’s theory that students learn by doing, Basquiat was […]
In our series Beyond the Village and Back, we take a look at some great landmarks throughout New York City outside of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo, celebrate their special histories, and reveal their (sometimes hidden) connections to the Village. You can also explore via our Beyond the Village and Back: Manhattan South […]
Greenwich Village has long been a hub of creativity, activism, and cultural exchange, and its Black history is deeply woven into the neighborhood’s identity. From the early days of New York City’s African American communities to the Civil Rights Movement and beyond, Black residents have shaped the social, artistic, and political fabric of the Village. […]
Costume designer and fashion icon Patricia Field is best known for, among other accomplishments, her work on the television show Sex and the City. For decades, Field also operated a boutique in Greenwich Village that became a fashion mecca, and font of downtown energy and creativity. After graduating from New York University in 1963, Field […]
Hip Hop at 50This is the fifth in a series of posts that celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Birth of Hip Hop. Our exploration takes us to the seminal places of Hip Hop’s early days in our neighborhoods and introduces some of the instrumental figures in the downtown world of Hip Hop. Negril Nightclub: 181 2nd Avenue […]
Costume designer and fashion icon Patricia Field is best known for, among other accomplishments, her work on the television show Sex and the City. For decades, Field also operated a boutique in Greenwich Village that became a fashion mecca, and font of downtown energy and creativity. After graduating from New York University in 1963, Field […]
Hip Hop at 50This is the sixth in a series of posts that celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Birth of Hip Hop. Our exploration takes us to the seminal places of Hip Hop’s early days in our neighborhoods and introduces some of the instrumental figures in the downtown world of Hip Hop. You can also explore our […]
In 1926, the Academy of Music opened at 126 East 14th street. Although called the Academy of Music, the building was primarily a cinema, and a particularly grand one at that, named for the previously existing Academy of Music opera house which had been located across the street, and had closed earlier that year. For […]
Hip Hop at 50This is the fifth in a series of posts that celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Birth of Hip Hop. Our exploration takes us to the seminal places of Hip Hop’s early days in our neighborhoods and introduces some of the instrumental figures in the downtown world of Hip Hop. Negril Nightclub: 181 2nd Avenue […]
“I always hope my art inspires people to be nice human beings.” says artist Magda Love. “The world is really fucked up; so if you have the power to create something positive and make people feel good, why not?” As luck would have it, Love does have that power, and she has deployed it, alongside […]
This is the fourth in a series of posts that celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Birth of Hip Hop. Our exploration takes us to the seminal places of Hip Hop’s early days in our neighborhoods and introduces some of the instrumental figures in the downtown world of Hip Hop.
Hip-Hop at 50This is the third in a series of posts that celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Birth of Hip Hop. Our exploration takes us to the seminal places of Hip Hop’s early days in our neighborhoods and introduces some of the instrumental figures in the downtown world of Hip Hop. The Ritz Party @ Webster Hall, […]
Welcome to February, and African American History Month! Village Preservation has long documented the stories behind the streets, buildings and people of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. Those investigations have enabled us to offer several great resources to learn more about our neighborhoods, including our African American history, including our Civil Rights and […]
Village Preservation is pleased to announce the 2nd year of VILLAGE VOICES, an outdoor public art exhibition produced by Village Preservation that celebrates and illuminates the artistic, social, political, and cultural movements of our neighborhoods, and the people who gave voice to them. Using the streets of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo as our stage, […]
The East Village is a rich palimpsest of fascinating histories. If many of them seem to share as their geographic nucleus the corner of 2nd and St Mark’s Place, that’s because, for a hundred years, there stood a 24-hour general store, the mythic stature of which increased with each successive countercultural wave that crashed on […]
People of African descent have lived in the area now known as the East Village since the mid-17th century, when semi-freed African slaves of the Dutch West India Company in New Amsterdam were granted farmland here in the area that lay between the established Dutch settlement south of Wall Street and the lands still populated […]
On January 3, 2017, we launched our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map, a unique online resource that marks more than 200 sites in our neighborhoods significant to the history of various civil rights and social justice movements. Since history is never finished, we continue to add new sites and stories with connections to civil […]
In 1978, a Polish emigré named Stanley Strychacki rented a basement space in a church at 57 St. Marks’ Place. The four-story-with-basement building, originally built as a private dwelling, was occupied by the Holy Cross Polish National Church throughout the mid 20th-century. Strychacki’s goal, along with co-founders Ann Magnusson and Susan Hannaford, was “to create an […]
Few places in America have made more significant contributions to civil rights and social justice struggles.
Historic plaques can be a wonderful way to educate the public about the remarkable history of our neighborhoods, and the incredible people, events, and movements connected to sites all around us. Historic plaques benefit local communities, as well as tourists and visitors, by sparking further interest in local history. Dedication ceremonies, which celebrate the installation […]
This February is African American History Month, a time to highlight and celebrate the rich history of African American struggle, success, and life in our neighborhoods over the last four hundred years (the first non-Native American settlers of Greenwich Village and the East Village were, in fact, African Americans). It’s also the 200th anniversary of the birth […]
Do you love old photos like we do? It’s fascinating to see the changing and remaining face of our neighborhoods over the years and decades. Village Preservation is fortunate to serve as custodian of an immense and rich photo archive you can explore here. And sometimes we see some intriguing online resources and archives that […]
Village Preservation’s Civil Rights and Social Justice Map was launched on January 3, 2017. This online resource, which marks sites in our neighborhoods significant to the history of various civil rights and social justice movements, includes over 200 locations. We’re proud that the map has been viewed by over 100,000 people in its three short […]
There are so many gems in our vast 2,100+ image Historic Image Archive, sometimes it even takes us a while to realize what we have and identify some of our images. A recent example is our discovery that several images in our archive contained the work of a great 1980s street art star — one […]
Scrolling through the NYC Department of City Planning website, it is easy to get lost amidst the zoning texts and maps and terms. But, as we come to realize from time to time – when one of our favorite businesses is replaced with a vacant storefront, or a luxury condominium building goes up across the […]
Village Preservation collaborated recently on a major project with Google Arts + Culture. We put together tours of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo that highlighted the deep and rich cultural and artistic movements in our neighborhoods, one of them being Latinx History. With Google’s innovative technology and a voice-over by actor John Leguizamo, going through the Latinx tour on the Google […]
“A long time ago in the 1960s, a young white girl from Ohio committed herself to being a revolutionary,” begins a short feature documentary about Patti Astor and her FUN Gallery (see within). FUN Gallery opened originally in the tiny basement storefront at 229 East 11th Street in 1981, later moving to 254 East 10th […]
New Yorkers love their small businesses, so it was no surprise that the plight of East Village mainstay Gem Spa drew so much attention and support from local residents and visitors alike. The almost 80-year-old corner stand has always sold a plethora of handy items, from snacks to newspapers, drinks to hats, toiletries and sunglasses […]
On June 12th, 2019 we will be celebrating seven outstanding awardees at our Annual Village Awards — RSVP here. Read blog posts about each of our 2019 Village Awardees here. The Brant Foundation and Gluckman Tang Architects will receive a Village Award on June 12th for meticulously and thoughtfully renovating a historic building, and bringing […]
The East Village is probably not the first neighborhood that comes to mind when most New Yorkers think about African American history. But this incredibly rich, multi-layered neighborhood was home to some remarkably consequential events, places, and figures in African-American history. To help explore just some of them, we have created a new African American […]
Earlier this month, GVSHP launched its East Village Preservation effort, releasing its new website “East Village Building Blocks,” which contains historic information and images for every one of the neighborhood’s 2,200 buildings. Of course, any neighborhood spanning five centuries of history and nearly 100 blocks will reveal some surprises when you scratch the surface. But the East Village’s story has […]
Are you one of the many people who has had to take on the seemingly all-powerful Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) in a real estate/preservation fight? Sometimes it may seem like REBNY and the other forces of Big Real Estate control everything in New York City. But we’ve actually tangled with the well-funded […]
Greenwich Village has been known throughout its existence for breaking new ground and embracing outsiders. One often-forgotten but important element of that trailblazing narrative is the extraordinary role the Village played in relation to African American history. The neighborhood was home to North America’s earliest free Black settlement in the 17th century, to some of America’s […]
Black History Month gives us the opportunity to look at an important and too often overlooked or undervalued part of American, New York, and neighborhood history and highlighting. Within our neighborhoods, there is an incredible array of African American histories, contributions, and culture all around us — sometimes hiding in plain sight. African Americans have […]
On January 3, 2017, GVSHP launched our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map. Something in the air told us there might be a hunger and need for this kind of information. But even we would not have guessed that the map would receive over 70,000 views in that time, with its praises sung in BrickUnderground, […]
The thermometer tells us we are definitely in the throes of summer. However, we’re fortunate enough to have a city pool in our midst where you can not only immerse yourself in cool water, but also in a prime example of the 1980’s New York art scene. The Tony Dapolito Recreation Center, formerly known as […]
Deborah Harry, lead singer of the seminal punk and new wave band Blondie, was born July 1, 1945. Both she as an artist and the group Blondie grew out of the ferment of the downtown scene of the Village and East Village in the 1970’s. From modest beginnings, they would go on to leave an […]
In this series, ‘More is More,’ we look at historic districts extensions in our area. In the previous posts, we covered the designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District Extension and the St. Mark’s Historic District Extension. Today we are going to look at the NoHo Historic District Extension, designated May 13, 2008. Following the designation […]
As 2016 fades into memory, we wanted to look back on all that GVSHP accomplished during the year, and what we have to look forward to in 2017. In 2016, GVSHP: Helped lead the opposition against the Mayor’s plans to roll back neighborhood zoning protections, successfully blocking most of the plan and leaving the majority of our […]
On August 12th, 1988, art legend Jean Michel-Basquiat was announced dead at Cabrini Medical Center on East 19th Street. According to the autopsy, Basquiat died from “acute mixed drug intoxication (opiates-cocaine).” In the months leading up to his death, Basquiat was reportedly doing up to a hundred bags of heroin a day.
On this day in 1734, Samuel Jones, namesake of Great Jones Street in NoHo, was born in Nassau County. At only two blocks long, Great Jones Street isn’t actually all that ‘great’ – at least not in size. But surprisingly for a street so short, it has figured prominently in New York City history and culture. […]
Great Jones Street is located between Lafayette Street and the Bowery and is named for Samuel Jones, who was born on July 26th, 1734. Jones was born in what is now Massapequa and educated in Hempstead. He spent part of his youth with the Merchant Marines before deciding to settle down and study law. At the […]
Today, we’d like to extend a “Happy ‘Landmark’ Birthday” to the NoHo Historic District Extension, which the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated on May 13, 2008. As you can see in the above historic district map, the extension connects the NoHo Historic District and the NoHo East Historic District. For the most part, the 56 […]
On February 16, 1990, we lost one of the most memorable and enduring figures of the 1980’s Downtown arts scene, Keith Haring (born May 4, 1958). Haring came to New York in 1978 to study at the School of Visual Art, and quickly became a noted up and coming artist. Haring utilized whatever canvas was […]
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 request about 57 Great Jones Street, part of the NoHo Historic District Extension, we turned our questioner straight to the historic district report. But sometimes, […]
