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.
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.
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Barbara Kahn is an East Village playwright who’s produced dozens of works rooted in history, especially New York history, with a frequent focus on women, LGBTQ+ people, other marginalized groups, and personal trauma. Her award-winning plays have been produced at the Theater for the New City since 1994, and elsewhere throughout New York, Paris, and London for decades.
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Ayo 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 first moved here as a teenager to live with her older sister, who was active in radical Black organizing at the time. Ayo followed suit, […]
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John 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 and a graduate of Yale’s School of Drama, Guare has lived in Greenwich Village since the 1960s, making plays as part of Caffe Cino, Cafe […]
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For 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 in the city during a golden age of music and recording here. Some of the greatest rock, hip hop, disco, jazz, and R&B artists of the […]
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Rick 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 unique guitar design and construction method, using recycled wood from New York City buildings being demolished, as well as his interactions over the years with […]
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