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.
Kevin McGruder was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio. He received a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University, an M.B.A. in Real Estate Finance from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Before pursuing doctoral studies, he worked for many years in nonprofit community […]
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Karen Cooper was born in Manhattan in 1948 and moved to Queens as a small child. She grew up yearning for the culture and excitement of Manhattan, taking frequent trips on the E and F trains into the West Village to visit the shops, theaters, and music venues that were abundant in the neighborhood at […]
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Margaret “Pi” Halsey Gardiner was born in New York City in 1949. Her family history in New York State spans back several generations, particularly on Long Island, where her great-great-great-grandfather was a whaling captain. She grew up in the MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens, one of several small historic districts in the city consisting of historic row houses […]
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Jonathan Ned Katz grew up in Greenwich Village in a house on Jane Street and attended the Little Red School House as a kid. There, he was encouraged to make art and found ways to discuss politics and other ideas with fellow “red diaper” babies, or children of members of the Communist Party. Although he […]
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Lucy Komisar has been a resident of Greenwich Village for decades. Having grown up in the Bronx and Long Island, she then moved to Manhattan when she was a student at Queens College. She became involved in the Civil Rights Movement and briefly lived in Mississippi while she served as editor of the Mississippi Free […]
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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.
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Alex 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.
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Christina 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 Trinidadian descent, Christina was exposed to elements of her parents’ cultural backgrounds at home, though they were keen to appear assimilated to anyone outside the […]
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Calvin 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, Missouri where he was born and raised. He attended Yale in the 1950s with Larry Kramer (later a neighbor in Greenwich Village and close family […]
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Barbara 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 focus on the experience of women, LGBTQ+ people, and personal trauma. Her award-winning plays have been produced at the Theater for the New City since […]
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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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