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 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 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 TranscriptMimi Sheraton (b. February 10, 1926) is a food critic and food writer who has lived in the Village since 1945. In 1975 she was she hired as the first … Continued
Full TranscriptPuppeteer Ralph Lee (b. 1935) has lived at Westbeth since 1970 and is known as the “Father” of the famous Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.
Full TranscriptRich Wandel (b. May 20, 1946) is a former president of the Gay Activist Alliance, and served as the Archivist Historian at the LGBT Community Center from its founding in … Continued
Full TranscriptDavid Rothenberg (b. August 19, 1933) is one of the Village’s most prolific activists. A former Broadway producer, he also produced the off-Broadway play “Fortune in Men’s Eyes”, which ignited … Continued
Full TranscriptDr. Victor Keyloun (b. February 20, 1935) worked at St. Vincent’s Hospital from 1963 to 1983. He was a neighborhood doctor, notably serving extended Italian families as well as the … Continued
Full TranscriptOtis Kidwell Burger (1923-2021) lived on Bethune Street for 58 years, where her life intertwined with some of the most intriguing and important figures in the Village during that time. … Continued
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