Village Preservation’s Oral History Project includes interviews with some of the great artists, activists, business owners, community leaders, and preservation pioneers of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. It captures and preserves their first-person perspective on the important histories they witnessed or of which they were a part.
Click here for an alphabetical list of our entire Oral History Collection.
The views expressed by the contributor(s) are solely those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or endorsement of our organization.
As Lower Manhattan’s elected representative for 35 years, Deborah Glick was a leading advocate for civil rights, reproductive freedom, animals and environmental preservation, the arts, and tenants’ rights. Glick was the first openly LGBTQ member of the State legislature when elected in 1990 and a leader in the fight for marriage equality. She fought to […]
Full Transcript
Janet Coleman is a writer, actor, radio producer, and historian of the theater. She worked at the New York Review from 1963 to 1966. She authored both “The Compass: The Improvisational Theater That Revolutionized American Comedy” and (with Al Young) “Mingus/Mingus: Two Memoirs.’ She is a founding producer of the seminal off-off Broadway’s Loft Theatre Workshop.
Full Transcript
Richard Barone is an acclaimed recording artist, performer, producer, author, and professor, whose lifetime of work has been profoundly influenced by, intertwined with, and a celebration of the musical history of Greenwich Village. Born and raised in Tampa, Florida, Barone moved to New York in the late 1970s, where he helped launch the indie rock […]
Full Transcript
Kevin McGruder is an active member of Other Countries, a Black gay men’s writing collective that was founded in 1986. This oral history includes extensive discussion of Other Countries’ founding and history, particularly its deep roots in the West Village and shifts in the group’s focus during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis. The oral […]
Full Transcript
Karen Cooper was the Director of Film Forum from 1972 to 2023, building the institution into a force for independent and repertory cinema. Her oral history deals with her five decades at its helm, her being drawn to the Village as a young person growing up in Queens, and changes she’s seen in the neighborhood since the mid-20th century.
Full Transcript
Margaret “Pi” Halsey Gardiner has been the Director of the Merchant’s House Museum since the early 1990s. Her oral history deals with decades of stewardship of that beloved NYC landmark and institutions, as well as growing up in MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens in the 1950s and her family’s deep roots in New York history.
Full Transcript
Jonathan Ned Katz is a pioneering public historian author, and artist credited with helping to establish the field of LGBTQ studies. His oral history deals with his research, writing, upbringing as a “red diaper baby” in Greenwich Village in the 1940s and ‘50s, and his coming out in the post-Stonewall era.
Full Transcript
Lucy Komisar is a former Village Voice reporter who covered the historic “Sip In” at Julius’ Bar and the former Vice President of the National Organization for Women involved in ending the men-only policy at McSorely’s Old Ale House.
Full Transcript
Shirley Wright co-founded the West Village Nursery School, a model, progressive, nursery school that has been a cornerstone institution in Greenwich Village for over sixty years, teaching children through play. She has lived in Greenwich Village for more than three quarters of a century.
Full Transcript
In 1971, Alex Harsley founded Minority Photographers, offering support, mentoring, and collaboration for minority and other marginalized photographers, and in 1973 opened the 4th Street Photo Gallery, to show not only his own work but the work of other Black photographers. Both are located in the East Village.
Full Transcript
Christina Maile is a Greenwich Village-based artist who has lived at Westbeth Artists Housing since its opening in 1970. She was intimately involved with organizing and support for fellow women artists there and beyond, and has drawn from her Malaysian and Trinidadian heritage to inform her artwork.
Full Transcript
Calvin Trillin is a an award-winning journalist, humorist, food writer, poet, memoirist and novelist and member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Known for his cultural commentary and reporting on the civil rights movement, he has lived in Greenwich Village for decades.
Full Transcript