GVSHP LAUNCHES EAST VILLAGE PRESERVATION CAMPAIGN, RELEASES ONLINE TOOL WITH HISTORIC INFO ON EVERY BUILDING IN NEIGHBORHOOD, and “A HISTORY OF THE EAST VILLAGE & ITS ARCHITECTURE” by FRANCIS MORRONE

GVSHP has many priorities for 2019, including securing protections for the University Place/Broadway corridor and the area south of Union Square, and seeking better and more consistent enforcement of existing landmark and zoning protections for the Greenwich Village Historic District, the Meatpacking District, NoHo, and our ten other historic districts.

Among those priorities is also documenting and celebrating the too-often unrecognized history of the East Village, and advocating for its preservation.

Toward that end, GVSHP is proud to introduce the following:

East Village Building Blocks:  This online resource, which took ten years to complete, used primary source research on every building in the East Village to determine (when possible) date of construction, original architect, original use, alterations over time, and any significant figures, events, businesses, or institutions connected to the existing building or prior buildings on the site. Buildings can be searched by address, location, architect, building type or style, or significant figures, cultural groups, or types of activities associated with it. Present day and historic photos are also provided for each building, along with historic documents establishing dates of construction, owners, architects, uses, and alterations. Buildings include scores of houses of worship, theaters, schools, libraries, the country’s first public housing development, and one of the largest collections of intact tenements from the early 19th to the early 20th centuries. While most of the buildings in the East Village were built for people of modest means by relatively unknown designers, architects as prestigious as James Renwick, John B. Snook, CBJ Snyder, McKim, Mead & White, Napoleon LeBrun, and Ralph Walker all contributed to the landscape.  Surviving buildings in the neighborhood had owners as diverse as the Stuyvesants and the Astors, Andy Warhol, and the Catholic Worker.  Explore it here.

‘A History of the East Village and Its Architecture’ by Francis Morrone:  This report by the noted architectural historian documents the East Village’s history from Dutch settlement in the 17th century, to its development in the 19th century as a prosperous merchant burg and then immigrant gateway, to its evolution in the 20th century as an epicenter of abandonment and blight to a mecca for cultural innovation and rebirth, and its struggle in the 21st century to maintain its identity in the face of renewed popularity and success. This vivid, illustrated report was funded by a grant from Preserve New York, a grant program of the Preservation League of NY State and the NY State Council on the Arts. Read it here.

GVSHP and allied community and preservation groups recently met with the Landmarks Preservation Commission to share this information with them and to encourage them to consider expanded landmark protections in the area (in 2012 we were able to help secure a tenfold expansion of historic district protections in the East Village).  

HELP PROTECT THE EAST VILLAGE:

Write the City urging them to expand landmark protections in the East Village CLICK HERE

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