Shirley Hayes
Shirley Hayes (1912-2002) was a community activist who led the successful fight in the 1950s against Robert Moses’ plan to extend a highway through Washington Square Park.
Full TranscriptVillage Preservation Oral History Collection
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.
Activists & Advocates
Margot Gayle
Margot Gayle (1908-2008) led the grassroots effort to save the landmark Jefferson Market Courthouse building in Greenwich Village and transform it into a library. Gayle begins this interview by discussing the origins of that effort — the formation of the Village Neighborhood Committee and its activities in the late 1950s to reactivate the courthouse’s clock.
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Doris Diether
Doris Diether (1929-2021) was a long-serving member of Manhattan’s Community Board 2 and Greenwich Village preservationist. Diether helped found Save the Village, a campaign focused on reforming zoning and rent laws in Greenwich Village. It was while working with Save the Village that Diether was first introduced to New York City’s zoning laws.
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Marlis Momber
Born in 1943 in Berlin, Germany, Marlis has lived in Loisaida since 1975. Her photographs document the struggle of the mostly Puerto Rican people living in that part of Manhattan. Her black-and-white and color photographs have been used to illustrate national and international publications on political and cultural topics such as: gentrification, urban development, slumlords/arson […]
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Frances Goldin
Frances Goldin (1924-2020) was a successful Manhattan literary agent and activist in practically every progressive movement of the past 70 years on the Lower East Side. A fighter for equitable housing, she was a founder of the Metropolitan Council on Housing and the Cooper Square Committee, and was a leader in the successful effort to […]
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Chino Garcia
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 […]
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Albert Fabozzi
A painter and interior designer, Albert Fabozzi grew up in Coney Island and lived in the West Village as a young adult. When he and his longtime partner moved to the East Village, Fabozzi took an interest in making the neighborhood, and especially Tompkins Square Park, safer and more appealing. He served on Community Board […]
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Marilyn Appleberg
A published author, Marilyn Appleberg (b. January 6, 1944) has been committed to neighborhood betterment since she moved to the East Village in 1969. She is the founder and president of the 10th and Stuyvesant Streets Block Association, catalyst for improvement of the city park in front of St. Mark’s Church — as well as […]
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Penny Arcade
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 […]
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