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.
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.
Full Transcript
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, […]
Full Transcript
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 […]
Full Transcript
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 […]
Full Transcript
Michael E. Levine (1943-2025) was an urban planner and NYC Department of City Planning Community Board 2 liaison beginning in the 1960s. He was intimately involved in the landmark designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District, pioneering zoning and landmark designations for SoHo, the Stonewall Riots, and Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the world’s largest LGBTQ+ […]
Full Transcript
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 […]
Full Transcript
Mimi Sheraton (February 10, 1926–April 6, 2023) was a food critic and food writer who had lived in the Village since 1945. In 1975 she was hired as the first female restaurant critic at The New York Times. Sheraton went on to work for a variety of magazines, including Time, Condé Nast Traveler, Harper’s Bazaar, […]
Full Transcript
Puppeteer Ralph Lee (b. 1935, d. 2023) lived at Westbeth beginning in 1970 and was known as the “Father” of the famous Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.
Full Transcript
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 […]
Full Transcript
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 […]
Full Transcript
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 […]
Full Transcript
Otis 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. She rented a room to Jane Jacobs in the 1950’s, during which time she wrote “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” and threw […]
Full Transcript