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.
Shirley Wright has lived in Greenwich Village for three quarters of a century, and 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.
Full TranscriptAlex Harsley was born on a farm in South Carolina, where he spent the first ten years of his life being trained to farm. When his mother decided to relocate to New York City to work, he advocated for himself, his brother, and his sister to join her, which they did in 1948. He attended a public school across the street from where he lived in the Morrisania section of the Bronx.
Full TranscriptChristina Maile is a Greenwich Village-based artist who has lived at Westbeth since it’s opening more than a half century ago. Raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn by parents of Malaysian and … Continued
Full TranscriptCalvin Trillin has lived on and off in Greenwich Village since 1969, but refers to himself as a “resident out-of-towner” with deep ties to the Midwest and, in particular, to Kansas City, … Continued
Full TranscriptBarbara Kahn is an East Village playwright who has produced dozens of works rooted in history, especially the history of New York and marginalized or oppressed people, with a frequent … Continued
Full TranscriptAyo Harrington has lived in the East Village since the 1960s, and been deeply involved in the community garden, urban homesteading, environmental, resiliency, educational equality, and civil rights movements. She … Continued
Full TranscriptJohn Guare (b. February 5, 1938) is a playwright and screenwriter known for Six Degrees of Separation and The House of Blue Leaves, among many other works. Born in Manhattan … Continued
Full TranscriptFor more than a quarter century, Robert Mason (b. 1946) operated RPM studios from his live/work loft on 12th Street south of Union Square, one of the first boutique recording studios … Continued
Full TranscriptMichael E. Levine (b. 1943) is an urban planner who worked as the NYC Department of City Planning’s CommunityBoard #2 liaison beginning in the 1960s, and was intimately involved in … Continued
Full TranscriptRick Kelly has owned the world-renowned Carmine Street Guitars at 42 Carmine Street since 1990 but opened his first shop on Downing Street in 1976. His oral history delves into his … Continued
Full TranscriptMimi Sheraton (February 10, 1926–April 6, 2023) was a food critic and food writer who had lived in the Village since 1945. In 1975 she was hired as the first … Continued
Full TranscriptPuppeteer Ralph Lee (b. 1935, d. 2023) lived at Westbeth beginning in 1970 and was known as the “Father” of the famous Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.
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