Women’s History Month: Celebrate, Explore, Preserve Women’s History

Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo have been home to a multitude of remarkable and transformative women, as well as the scene of innumerable vital movements for women’s equality and empowerment. This Women’s History Month, we offer many ways for you to celebrate, explore, and help protect the rich women’s history in our neighborhoods:

Dorothy Day and St. Joseph’s Church are among the dozens of sites on our Women’s Suffrage History Map — click to access.

Our Women’s Suffrage History Map: Explore dozens of sites in our neighborhoods connected to the struggle for women’s suffrage, and the people, organizations, and events that made it possible.

Pioneers including (clockwise from upper left) Amelia Earhart, Edie Windsor, and Selma Hortense Burke as well as historic sites like McSorley’s are featured in our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map — click to access.

Our expanded and redesigned Civil Rights and Social Justice Map: Among the more than 200 sites in our neighborhood are more than 60 connected to women’s history and the women’s movement, including several new additions regarding women’s history. 

Emma Lazarus and her home at 18 West 10th Street, one of the sites on the “Transformative Women” tour found on our Greenwich Village Historic District Map — click to access

Our Greenwich Village Historic District Map + Tours: Take our “Transformative Women” tour to see the homes and learn about the lives of dozens of women who changed politics, the arts, and culture.

(l. to r.) Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Ronnie Spector, from our South of Union Square Women’s History Tour — click to access/

South of Union Square Map + Tours: The Women’s History tour on our South of Union Square Map contains 20 sites connected to crucial events, figures, and organizations in women’s history, and some amazing women writers, artists, educators, and activists.

Just some of the remarkable women who have been the subject of Village Preservation’s oral histories — click to access the entire collection.

Oral Histories: We have exclusive conversations with more than two dozen of the most impactful women of our neighborhoods of the last 25 years, from Jane Jacobs to Mimi Sheraton, Marlis Momber to Penny Arcade, and many more.

Among our Women’s History Month programs: “The Unseen Revelers: A Brief History of Female Nightlife Activists in the Village” and “Celebrating 150 Years of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.”

Public Programs: We have an amazing roster of Women’s History Month programs in March, including ones focused on Billie Holiday and other female icons of nightlife in our neighborhoods; sculptor, arts benefactor, and Whitney Museum founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney marking her 150th birthday; and a walking tour of women’s history sites in our midst. Check out them and all our other programs here. 

Historic Plaques: Many of our historic markers commemorate transformative local women, including Jane Jacobs, Lorraine Hansberry, Frances Perkins, Elizabeth Blackwell, Martha Graham, Anaïs Nin, and more. Explore them all, virtually or in person, here. 

See who you voted for as the “25 Most Impactful Women of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo.” 

And help us advocate to recognize and protect women’s history sites as landmarks.

Some of the many unprotected landmarks of women’s history South of Union Square we are seeking to honor and preserve.

We’ve sent the City a list of 22 unprotected women’s history sites within our proposed South of Union Square Historic District, and urged them to act to preserve them. Since we’ve done so, one has been landmarked, with no action — or even sign of possible action — on any of the remaining. This failure to recognize and protect women’s history is unacceptable.

TO HELP:

Tell City officials to recognize and protect critical women’s history sites in our neighborhoods — CLICK HERE
March 3, 2025