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.
Born in Germany, Wolf Kahn (1927-2020) came to America as a teenager, and discovered painting while working in a U.S. Navy paint shop. He went on to study under Stuart Davis and Hans Hofmann, and was part of the East 10th Street gallery scene. One of this highly acclaimed contemporary painter’s most vivid Village memories […]
Full Transcript
Chino Garcia (b. 1947) is a Lower East Side/East Village community activist. In this oral history, he discusses his birth in Puerto Rico and movement to New York, his activism as a founding member of the CHARAS–El Bohio Cultural Center, which the City took from the community and sold; his work with renowned poet Miguel […]
Full Transcript
A trustee of Village Preservation, Tom Birchard has owned and run Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant and neighborhood institution, for more than four decades.
Full Transcript
This true New York love story features a Muslim born in Egypt and a former Catholic born in Poland who worked across the street from one another, fell in love, got married, and now run kosher restaurant B&H Dairy together at 127 Second Avenue between 7th Street and St. Mark’s Place. B&H Dairy has served […]
Full Transcript
The oral history with this icon of the Downtown arts scene and “Queen of the Underground” (b. 1950) covers her life in New York City since leaving home as a teenage runaway. It covers topics from her association with Andy Warhol to the AIDS epidemic, and her work giving voice to female and transgressive sexuality […]
Full Transcript