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2014 Year In Review: GVSHP Programs
…music from 1968-1971. The building is located in the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District. The event will include appearances by guitarist Lenny Kaye and Joshua White, founder of the…
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How an East Village building went from gangster hangout to Andy Warhol’s Electric Circus
Google Street View of 19-25 St. Mark’s Place today Fifty years ago this week, the Velvet Underground released their second album, “White Light/White Heat.” Their darkest record, it was also…
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GVSHP 2016 Book List & Holiday Gift Ideas
…private opinions that divided abolitionists. It describes the network of black and white men and women who were vital links in the extensive Underground Railroad, conclusively confirming a daily reality….
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The Baldwin-Kennedy Meeting of 1963
…was at hand. James Baldwin photo Magnolia Pictures Baldwin first met Kennedy at the storied White House dinner in April of 1962 which honored American winners of the Nobel Prize….
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The Death and Life of Louis Sullivan
…a Beaux Arts aesthetic referred to as “The White City.” This imperial vision turned its back on Sullivan’s distinctly modern and American style. Where Sullivan sought to express and impress…
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Why Isn’t This Landmarked?: 32 East 10th Street, Home of artist Franz Kline
…for his black and white abstractions using house paint. His style of painting was what art critic Harold Rosenberg referred to as ‘action painting,’ and during the 1950s he became…
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The Greenwich Village church that threw a presidential election
…candidate James Blaine. Blaine faced a tough battle against Democrat Grover Cleveland, even though Democrats had not managed to win the White House in nearly three decades. Blaine had been…
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Penny Arcade’s Village Preservation Oral History – Chronicles of the Queen of Downtown
…somebody who had the choice to either go canoeing or go whitewater rafting, and I ended up whitewater rafting. Really, I’m somebody who would be more happy in a canoe,…
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Mabel Ping-Hua Lee and the Fight for Chinese American and Women’s Rights
…outspoken in her passion for equal rights for women and Chinese Americans, and had recently caught the attention of white American suffragists, who invited her to participate in this monumental…
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Oral History with the King of Carmine Street Custom Guitars, Rick Kelly
…his custom guitars are built with reclaimed white pine. Much of this white pine, called the “King’s Wood,” was barged down the Hudson River 200 years ago from the forests…
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The Modern Roller Skate, and Men Fighting for Women’s Suffrage — Introduced at the Same East Village Locale
…picketed the White House in 1917 for women’s suffrage, rolling smoothly along the sidewalk in their rocking skates. It should be noted that Plimpton passed away in 1911, and while…
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My Favorite Things: Holiday Time at Salmagundi Club!
…Wyeth, and Howard Pyle; Impressionist painters William Merritt Chase and Childe Hassam; Arts and Crafts pioneer John LaFarge; designer Louis C. Tiffany; Hudson River School artist Thomas Moran; and architect Stanford…
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A Campus Comparison
A comparison of Stanford University’s campus (orange) and NYU’s ‘core’ (purple outline) in Greenwich Village. As part of its massive proposed Village expansion plan, NYU is seeking to build 2.5…
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The Female Trailblazer Who Helped Build New York’s Landmarks #SouthOfUnionSquare
…City and a National Historic Landmark. The Whitehall, 1904, courtesy of history101 From there, she designed everything from the “foundation to the roof” of The Broad Exchange building at 25…
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Dr. Bruce Voeller: Gay Rights and Public Health Pioneer
…and before. National Gay Task Force members after the historic 1977 White House meeting In 1977, the Task Force brokered another historic first – the very first meeting of any…
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(Even More) Artists, Theaters, and Advocates for Civil Rights and Social Justice in Our Neighborhoods
…year the group convened. The only organizing principle was that all works had to be exclusively in black-and-white. A summer 2011 exhibition “Spiral: Perspectives on African-American Art Collective,” held at the…
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Our Epic Greenwich Village and East Village Watch-List
…movie, a young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in New York City….
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Greek Revival Lesson Continued
…the very grand white marble stoops also have heavy white marble balustrades. The sidewalls of the stoops vary quite a bit, and sometimes were topped by ironwork along the slope…
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City’s SoHo/NoHo Rezoning Plan Includes Part of Chinatown, and Hundreds of Rent Regulated Units Could Be Lost
The newly-released study by Village Preservation shows that the City’s SoHo/NoHo Rezoning Plan, which includes part of Chinatown, will make the area richer, whiter, and more expensive to live in than…
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The Largest Black Studies Collection in the U.S. — University Place Bookshop, #SouthOfUnionSquare
…dust” As described by Lipman, that day Goldwater was wearing his “usual attire of a shiny blue suit, white shirt, messy tie, and black shoes with white cotton socks.” University…
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The Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois Reverberates Throughout Our Neighborhoods
…before moving to 70 Fifth Avenue, by W.E.B. DuBois, Dr. Henry Moskowitz, Mary White Ovington, William English Walling, Bishop Alexander Walters, Rev. William Henry Brooks, and Ida B. Wells, among…
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Historic Images and Maps Solve Mysteries of Missing Church and Street
…the white people of the United States have inflicted grievous wrong on the colored people of African descent, and I believe that Catholics have shamefully neglected to perform their duties…
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Who’s That Rapping At My Chamber Door? Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” Takes Flight in Greenwich Village
…W. White, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, Virginia. Poe became assistant editor of the periodical in August 1835, but White discharged him within a few weeks for…
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Igal Roodenko: Printer and Civil Rights Trailblazer #SouthOfUnionSquare
…1947, CORE organized the “Journey of Reconciliation,” which sent sixteen black and white men through Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Mississippi to test the enforcement of a recent Supreme Court…
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The 10 most charming spots in the Greenwich Village Historic District
…hand, located between 5th Avenue and MacDougal Street, is almost always locked at its western end, and the eastern end is permanently blocked by the mass of the large white-brick apartment…
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John Hammond: Villager & 20th Century’s Most Influential Producer
…Basie who were not allowed to play in white venues or with other white musicians, Hammond fought to end the racial segregation of artists. As a producer, writer, critic, civil…
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“The Bells” – Poe’s Poetry and Ochs’ Folk Music in the Village
…the following verse: “Soldiers, disillusioned, come home from the war. Sarcastic students tell them not to fight no more. And they argue through the night. Black is black and white…
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Chinese American Activists Fight for Their Rights in Our Neighborhoods
…a group of white steam-laundry owners threatened by the competition of Chinese laundries, would launch frequent attacks on businesses owned by Chinese Americans, vandalizing their storefronts. As a result, insurance…
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Take a Virtual Walk! Visit the Homes of Greenwich Village’s Social Change Champions
…on a white horse wearing a white cape, she looked like a contemporary Joan of Arc. Two years later, in 1915, Milholland travelled on the Ford Peace Ship to participate…
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Kerouac and Catholicism in Greenwich Village
…infamous for his drinking, Kerouac was a regular at the White Horse Tavern and South Village mainstays like Cafe Reggio, Kettle of Fish Bar, and the Gaslight Cafe. He also…
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Stormé DeLarverie: Village Guardian
…mother who was a servant to a white homeowner in New Orleans, DeLarverie was never given a birth certificate because interracial marriage was illegal in Louisiana. Instead, she chose her…
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Gordon Bunshaft: the Godfather of Corporate Modernism, in Greenwich Village
…also now a New York City landmark. Also completed in 1952 and based upon the designs of Le Corbusier and the Bahaus’ Walter Gropius, Manhattan House made blocky, glazed white…
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Beyond the Village and Back: Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church
…century church buildings originally built by white congregations which were moving out of the neighborhood, while others – like Abyssinian – chose to construct new structures altogether. Walking around Harlem…
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African Free School #3, 120 West 3rd Street
…were taught sewing and knitting. Originally the school employed only white teachers, but it grew to employ black teachers as well. After a fire destroyed the original building, African Free…
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Dorothy Day
…this rotten, decadent, putrid industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering in the whited sepulcher of New York.” Such are the words of the “radical Christian,” Dorothy Day, who is…
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(Even More) Civil Rights and Social Justice Champions in Our Neighborhoods
…York Times opinion piece titled “American Theater: For Whites Only?,” which called for the creation of a Black theater company. The article caught the attention of the Ford Foundation, which…
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Janis Joplin and Greenwich Village
…surrounded by middle and upper middle class white southerners, who disapproved of a white teenage girl having such interests. Despite their disapproval, she began performing the blues for the first…
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Three Stops on Christopher Street
…Buttersworth painted a wintry, slushy scene under and around the station. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt selected the artwork, Christopher Street, Greenwich Village to hang in the White House, and the…
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St. Benedict the Moor Church and the South Village’s Little Africa
…integrated community as these businesses would serve both Black and white clientele. In fact, when St. Benedict the Moor first opened, both the area’s Black and white residents wanted to…
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The Legacy of The Brownies’ Book
…reports would have on Black children learning about their culture and history, as well as on any hatred toward white people. In 1919, he announced the launch of a new…
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The Best Birdwatching in Greenwich Village and the East Village
…branches one may even catch a glimpse of the predatorial red-tailed hawks that make the park their playground. Tompkins Square Park White-breasted nuthatch Tompkins Square Park The variety of birds…
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Civil Rights History at 92 Grove Street
…struggle, but illustrates the same race-based violence African Americans faced across the centuries. In July 1863, angry white working-class New Yorkers began a protest against the new federal draft that…
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Jimmy DeSana: Sexuality and Subversion
…collection of grainy black and white nude photographs of DeSana and his friends, cast against a domestic landscape in playful poses. For the rest of his career, he would continue…
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Women’s History and Our Civil Rights Map
…Court. Prior to Sotomayor, only two non-white justices, Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas (both African Americans), had served, and only two women: Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (both…
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The Rise of Architectural Styles on East 10th Street
…Square Branch Library, designed by McKim Mead & White in 1904 The final new building to be erected within the boundaries of the current historic district might be the one…
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Tour the Musical Sites of Producer John Hammond’s World
…Vaughn, and, of course, the aforementioned Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan, among many others. Championing artists like Billie Holiday and Count Basie who were not allowed to play in white venues…
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#SouthOfUnionSquare: The Upcoming Demolition of 813 and 815 Broadway
…white tiles, white uniforms, and waitresses instead of then-common waiters. The upcoming demolition of 813 and 815 Broadway illustrates a troubling future for the historic buildings South of Union Square…
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The Life and Lithographs of Laurie Ourlicht
…York Life Insurance Building in Tribeca at 346 Broadway, which was designed by McKim, Mead, and White (the architects for the Washington Square Arch and the historic Pennsylvania Station). Laurie…
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North America’s First Free Black Settlement In Our Neighborhoods
…people of African descent was seized by wealthy white landowners who turned these former free black settlements into retreats, farms, and plantations. The landowners in this first settlement of free…
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Celebrating Flag Day!
…the Second Continental Congress: “Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field,…
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The Gilded Village: Where Two Thirds of the Population Lived
…in Manhattan, 1927. Image courtesy the Library of Congress. During the winter of 1893, the East Side Relief Work Committee (ESRWC) was formed to “whitewash” the tenements. The ESRWC hired…
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Why Isn’t This Landmarked?: 815 Broadway
…with an unusually high emphasis – for the period – on cleanliness and hygiene. Their novel design format included white tiles, white uniforms, and waitresses instead of then-common waiters. Within…
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Jean-Michel Basquiat, Michael Stewart, and ‘Defacement’
…who was white. Stewart had allegedly been seen by the cops kissing a white woman on the cheek prior to his fatal encounter, which reportedly served as a factor that…
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Beyond the Village and Back: Congregation Shearith Israel
…Slowly and with dignity a gray-haired man, wrapping his talith about his shoulders (the talith is a fringed shawl of white silk, bordered with blue, which ministers and members of…
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The “Fighting Ninth Precinct” at 321-323 East 5th Street
…5th Street station. Both Francis L.V. Hoppin and Terence Koen served as apprentices in the prominent firm of McKim, Mead & White before opening their practice in this city in…
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How Greenwich Village Saved Piet Mondrian
…which had evolved from colorful landscapes, to geometric representations, to the form for which Mondrian became most famous — white or neutral backgrounds with a few simple black lines at…
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Happy Birthday East 10th Street Historic District
…by McKim, Mead & White. According to our friends at the Historic District Council, this branch was one of twelve Carnegie libraries built by McKim, Mead & White, one of…
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Cafe Society, The Wrong Place for the Right People
…talents in jazz history to its stage, including Josh White, Ida James, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Big…
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Tales from the Crypt: Greenwich Village as seen through its burial sites
…began a demographic shift in the makeup of the village, which until that time been a mix of poorer white and free black and slave communities. Washington Square Park Burial…
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The African Grove Theater
…and Houston. Brown’s African Grove Theater was located near a theater serving a white audience, the Park Theater, with which it often competed. While the African Company would often put…
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Slavery, Gentrification, and the Last Execution in Washington Square
…the wealthier white families that had been moving into the area. Temporally and geographically, in 1819 Rose was living on the edge of freedom. Though Rose was eventually executed, her…
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Building Profile: 321-323 East 5th Street
…firm of McKim, Mead & White before opening their practice in this city in 1894. The influence of the Beaux Arts tradition favored by McKim, Mead & White is clearly…
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Folk Music in Greenwich Village: 1961-1970
…moved to Macdougal Street, and hung out with the Clancy Brothers at the White Horse Tavern (567 Hudson Street). She, Yarrow, and Stookey performed together as Peter, Paul, and Mary,…
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Examining a Building’s Past, Punk Rock Style
…it upon himself to find out. He pored through archives, interviewed locals, commissioned artwork, and did a whole lot of writing. The result is a small black-and-white ’zine that covers…
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Looking Back to When Paris Was Burning
…including Sundance, the Berlin International Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival. It introduced largely-white audiences, both gay and straight, to cultural phenomena including voguing, shade, and reading —…
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2014 Village Award winner: Village Community Boathouse
…rivers and the harbor for trips of varying lengths. The typical style of rowboat they build and operate is called a Whitehall gig, a 25-foot-long rowboat that is traditional to…
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Lost Theaters Of The East Village: Loew’s Avenue B
…Thomas W. Lamb, Loew’s Avenue B’s facade was clad in white terra cotta and featured over-sized arches and large windows. It was a gleaming contrast to the brick tenements that…
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A ‘Crazy’ Weekend
(l. to r.) Stacey Nelkin, Joshua White, Jesse Kornbluth, and Miles Chapin discuss the film and East Village music and performance scene of the 60’s and 70’s after the film….
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Gore Vidal (1925 -2012) and Greenwich Village
…pressed-tin ceiling, black-and-white tile floors and dollar salads with all the bread and butter you could eat, the San Remo attracted a younger, hipper crowd more into experimenting with drugs…
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The Illuminated Village
…Rouge, and the owners, who collaborated with D’Lugoff on the club’s opening, adopted the old sign as well. Kudos! Illuminated signs of bars like the White Horse Tavern (Hudson and…
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Underground Railroad Church Once Located in Greenwich Village Led Abolitionist Cause
…shortages, the draft put the most pressure on working-class white men and their families, who, following the circulation of rumors in the press and the city at large, came to…
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Gansevoort Plaza Designs Revealed
…white bollards, traffic stripes, planters and movable tables & chairs. According to the DOT, the number of bollards and white stripes fits their minimum requirements for traffic control and safety….
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On This Day: New York City Draft Riots
…avoid service. Because African-Americans were not considered citizens, they were not allowed to serve. Thus the act exacerbated tensions building from the Civil War, further enflaming white New York City…
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Welcome Aboard, Lannyl Stephens
…Theatre. A native of Louisiana who grew up in Texas, Lannyl is a truly transplanted New Yorker. In fact, she likes to quote E.B. White: ‘There are roughly three New…
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Grand Central Grandeur, in the Village
…The ship first went to Pier 59 at 18th Street, the pier of the White Star Line where the Titanic was supposed to arrive, to drop off the Titanic’s lifeboats…
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The Village Under Siege – By What?
…emergence of new cultures in mainstream, often white, society. Although only 23 years ago, it’s sometimes hard to imagine that those quoted are talking about the same neighborhood as the…
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Many layers of history on 4th and 5th Streets
…firm of McKim, Mead & White before opening their practice in this city in 1894. The influence of the Beaux Arts tradition favored by McKim, Mead & White is clearly…
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A Terra Cotta Gem Shines on West 14th Street
…corner of Seventh Avenue and West 14th Street, this polychromatic, 12-story visual delight is replete with glazed terra cotta in hues of white, beige, yellow, cobalt blue, celadon and green,…
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Richard Wright in Greenwich Village
…first African American authors to protest the treatment of black Americans by white Americans, and would greatly influence an entire generation of African American writers. Iconic works such as Native…
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10th Street, A. T. Stewart, & Ladies’ Mile
…Street. “…in Italian palazzo style, the five-story exterior, painted white, was majestic with street-level sheets of plate glass between tall Corinthian columns and, above, four tiers of 84 identically arched…
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The Man Who Sculpted Our Image of Abraham Lincoln
…nineteen-foot tall sculpture is magnificent, carved from twenty-eight blocks and 175 tons of Georgia white marble. The sculptor, Greenwich Village resident Daniel Chester French, was present for the ceremony, the…
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La Vie en Rose: Meet Villager Rose Hartman
…as Bianca Jagger atop a white horse at Studio 54. Known for her ability to gain entrance into any social gathering, and possessed of an uncanny eye for candid shots,…
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Spiral Group: From Greenwich Village to the Brooklyn Museum
…only organizing principle was that all works had to be exclusively in black-and-white—a poignant guideline if not constraint, then and now. Exhibit catalog as shown on p.g. 224 of “The…
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Ithiel Town: It’s All Greek (and Gothic) to Him
…Jackson Davis for the University of the City of New York, now New York University. It was built of white marble in the English Collegiate Gothic style and featured a…
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Founded by Villagers, the ACLU Remains Vital to Our Society
…two white women in 1931. This trial was appealed many times, one of the accusers eventually recanted her claims, and the ordeal even forced the stipulation that juries cannot be…
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Many Layers of History between 3rd and 2nd Avenues
…second floor have arched enframements with exaggerated keystones. The second floor also has recessed belt courses of white brick, a popular feature of Renaissance Revival tenement design. The windows on…
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July 9, 1819: Slavery, Gentrification, and the Last Execution in Washington Square
…as a domestic worker for one of the wealthier white families that had been moving into the area. Temporally and geographically, in 1819 Rose was living on the edge of…
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Bob Dylan’s South Village
…Gerde’s, the Gaslight Café, the Commons, the Folklore Center, the Kettle of Fish, and the Whitehorse Tavern by night and Café Borgia, Café Cino, and Caffe Reggio, the first coffeehouse…
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Village People: Arthur Garfield Hays
…Scottsboro trials – a series of trials involving nine young Black men in Alabama, who were accused of raping two White women in 1931. This trial was appealed many times,…
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The Times They Are a-Changin: Village New Year’s Eve, Bob Dylan style!
…59 Christopher Street. Current Kettle of Fish bar. Photo courtesy of Kettle of Fish. Whitehorse Tavern Dylan owes his namesake partially to the Whitehorse Tavern. This bar at 567 Hudson…
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Dylan Thomas in New York: The Rock Star Poet at his Zenith
…attracted many poets and writers including Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound and ee cummings. Minetta Tavern The White Horse became infamous as the very last place Thomas hoisted a few. Eighteen…
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Wanda Gág: Village Eccentric, Artist, and Cat Storyteller
We’re on a roll with children’s book writers of the Village! Read our previous posts about E.B. White, Robert McClosky, Margaret Wise Brown, Maurice Sendak, and Otis Kidwell Burger. Though…
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Hunter S. Thompson: Iconoclast and Writer For Our Times
…White Horse Tavern was one. White Horse Tavern Chumley’s was a frequent stop. And of course he spent many an hour in his favorite, McSorley’s Old Ale House His longtime…
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Happy Birthday to Wolf Kahn, who Draws the City like a Landscape
…… [A] Blockbuster is a white guy—or woman, I guess, but mostly guys—who goes and signs a lease for an apartment. Talks to the super, landlords. And then lives there…
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GVHD50 Partner Roundup: Restaurant Edition
…and Barrow Streets in the West Village. It was established in 1922 by the socialist activist Leland Stanford Chumley, who converted a former blacksmith’s shop near the corner of Bedford…
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Ai Weiwei and The Two East Villages: Part One
…Ginsberg’s apartment, listening to him read poetry. Ai Weiwei, New York City, (corner of West 3rd Street and Sixth Avenue), June 3, 1989. Photo by Allen Ginsberg. Courtesy of Stanford…
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The First Library for Women, in Greenwich Village
…through 1865. Following that, it moved to 80 White Street and then 44 Franklin Street, also the location of the Working Women’s Protective Union. By 1879 the library was under…
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2020 Village Awardee: Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street
…retribution by North Korea that the White House labelled a “serious national security matter” and the Defense Department described as “an act of war.” Cinema Village remains a family-owned and…
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Why Isn’t This Landmarked?: 55 Fifth Avenue
…was one of the very first integrated musical recording session. While black and white musicians might at times play together at clubs, recording together was a taboo which Hammond was…
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Slugger Ann and Jackie Curtis — Part of the East Village Family
…would sometimes have a half dozen Chihuahuas stuffed inside her low-cut dress, propped up by her enormous breasts. Jackie sometimes tended the bar in jeans and a white T‑shirt with…
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