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.
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 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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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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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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Michael E. Levine (1943-2025) was 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 the landmark designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District as well as pioneering zoning and landmark designations for SoHo. Born and raised in Brooklyn and a […]
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Rich 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 1990 to today. From the 1980s through the AIDS Crisis, Rich has been a leader in the ongoing LGBT civil rights movement towards greater tolerance […]
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David 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 a movement to serve the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated. From this, Rothenberg founded the Fortune Society in 1967, an organization whose mission is to foster […]
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Dr. 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 Village’s large gay population, at a time when many doctors would not. His last years in practice overlapped with the first years of the tragic […]
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Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) was an American dancer, choreographer and leader of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, located since 1971 at Westbeth in the West Village.
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Since 1983, Cominskie has lived in Westbeth, a nonprofit housing and commercial complex dedicated to providing affordable living and working space for artists and arts organizations, located in the old formerly disused Bell Telephone Labs at Bethune and West Streets. In this oral history, he discusses the significance of an affordable housing community for artists, […]
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Vincent Livelli (April 9, 1920 – June 21, 2024) lived in the Village for over 100 years. From the 1940s to 1970s, Vincent helped revolutionize the cruise ship industry as a music and dance director. Vincent reminisces about his early years growing up in the South Village as the child of Sicilian and Genovese immigrants […]
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