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:

Suffragist Sarah Smith Garnet’s home is one of dozens of sites on our Women’s Suffrage 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.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who lived at 3 Bedford Street, from 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 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: “Sass in the City: New York Women of Wit in the Twentieth Century” and “Berenice Abbott & Village Friends: A Love Letter to the Past”

Public Programs: We have an amazing roster of Women’s History Month programs this month, including ones focused on Jane Jacobs, Berenice Abbott, and the intersection between the women’s and civil rights movements in our neighborhoods in the late 19th and early 20th centuries  

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 1, 2024