…planned at the time, thus making Washington Square little more than the greenery surrounding a highway on-ramp. Jacobs and fellow activist Shirley Hayes would have none of it. The City tried to…
Read More…the process. But affordable housing advocates have a particular stake in ensuring these rezoning plans are not adopted. Why? Because these proposals would arguably do little or nothing for the…
Read More…and 3-to-1 margin respectively. Why are measures aimed at increasing affordability and quality in new construction getting such a cold shoulder? Perhaps because they would do little or none of…
Read More…Village shop is a little further from mass transit. Our clientele on East 7th is probably a little funkier, which is about what you’d expect from the location.” What is…
Read More…which borders both neighborhoods and has little landmarking, very generous zoning, and prolific housing construction, has prices comparable to SoHo and higher than Greenwich Village. So does nearby Little Italy,…
Read More…1909 as a biracial social justice organization seeking to end bias and discrimination against African Americans and ensure their equality of opportunity in the United States. Founded by Dr. Henry…
Read More…Peter Larsen, a fellow Danish immigrant, and moved the family to a predominantly White German and Scandinavian neighborhood, severing Nella’s access to African American culture and religion during her youth….
Read More…York’s most prominent and successful African American citizens and civil rights crusader; and for years the home of revered abolitionist, suffragist, and educator Sarah Smith Tompkins Garnet. Write the Mayor…
Read More…were both Republicans (the party of Lincoln) and outspoken abolitionists. In addition, Hopper Gibbons ran a school for African-American children and volunteered at a school for African-American adults. Their home…
Read More…They first got together with the purpose of organizing a bus to take New York-based African-American artists to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Norman Lewis (1909-1979), Processional…
Read More…band. The tiny stage would be filled with as many as 25 of New York’s best African American performers of the time. Harriet Browne, showcased in her later years in…
Read More…in her business, promoting works by immigrant, women, Jewish, and African American artists. In its early years, the Downtown Gallery provided a platform for folk art through its American Folk…
Read More…for an African American audience which showcased some of the great writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance, and which has been called “the most widely read and influential periodical…
Read More…over 100 schools across New York City. In the summer of 2020 we decided to add a third course covering the history and contributions of African Americans in Greenwich Village….
Read More…recognized African-American opera stars. Her career broke through racial barriers at another time in our history when the United States was experiencing intense racial strife and conflict. Leontyne Price after…
Read More…communities and histories. For many years our work has focused on documenting, celebrating, and protecting underrepresented communities and histories, and especially sites connected to civil rights for African Americans, LGBTQ…
Read More…was his steadfast support for African American civil rights and empowerment, as well as providing a progressive voice for Jews, which was so typical of the IWO. Regarding “Negro History…
Read More…creative intervention that elevates the impact of the African Diaspora. They establish space to revisit untold and suppressed stories through a practice that invites people to walk, talk, and reimagine…
Read More…for slavery’s abolition, and to recognize African American history, culture, and struggle. Our neighborhoods were home to a remarkable array of people and institutions that played a prominent role in…
Read More…that the LPC has finally chosen to move ahead on this proposal, they have consistently dragged their feet on protecting endangered sites connected to African American history in our neighborhoods….
Read More…congregation moved in 1903, it had grown to become a wealthy and sizable congregation, and a significant actor in New York’s African American religious and cultural life. While in Greenwich…
Read More…and has since been updated and expanded to more than 60 entries on women’s history alone among over 200 that also cover African American, LGBTQ+, Hispanic, and Asian American histories,…
Read More…New York City. These sites — key to the stories of African Americans, Hispanics, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and disabled New Yorkers — share two things in common. Several are imminently…
Read More…13th Street in the 1960s, during the peak of his career. Weston consistently incorporated African musical elements in his work, and played an important role in advancing the argument, now…
Read More…wasn’t familiar with many Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. I had had a hit song called “African Waltz” in England and here. To be honest, there was a lot of African…
Read MoreCelebrating Freedom: A Lecture by Sherrill D. Wilson July 4, 1827 was the legal and official beginning of the emancipation of African enslaved people in New York City, although some…
Read More…Lower East Side, and SoHo, were former African slaves of the New Netherland colony who formed the first free black settlement in North America. Starting in 1643, just over two…
Read More…African-American History LGBTQ Sites Pineapples, Pinecones and Acorns of the Village Musicians’ Homes Movie and TV Show Locations Wood Frame Houses Buildings Designed by Emery Roth (& Sons) Little Flatirons…
Read More…collection of histories. This neighborhood was a critical touchstone in the African American, LGBTQ, and women’s civil rights movements; it was home to the revolutionary “New York School” of artists;…
Read More…their special histories, and reveal their (sometimes hidden) connections to the Village. Walking through the neighborhood now often referred to as NoLIta (north of Little Italy), one can’t help but…
Read More…Davis presented her research on the little wooden farmhouse in the West Village, 121 Charles Street. She just loves that little house! More recently, we visited First Presbyterian Church on…
Read MoreYesterday, Off the Grid provided a sneak preview into our upcoming February programs to celebrate African-American History Month. Today we want to take a look back at our January programs….
Read More…space, and sometimes you see older buildings attached to newer ones (which only adds to the fascinating history of a property). Well, I was a little bit right and a…
Read More…the forerunner of the modern roller skate. Safer and easier to use than existing versions, which were little more than wheels attached to rigid boards, his “rocker skate” allowed skaters…
Read More…shed light on immigrant, African-American, Jewish, Cold War, and feminist history, as well as Yiddish publishing. The IWO was founded in 1930 as an immigrant fraternal order that provided high-quality, low-cost…
Read More…some of those, however, continued to face persecution). Many more, however, fled to North Africa and the Ottoman Empire, Holland, and eventually the New World. Some of these Sephardic Jews…
Read MoreFrom the mid-19th through the early 20th century, the East Village was the center of what came to be known as Kleindeutschland, or “Little Germany” – the largest German-speaking community in…
Read MoreGansevoort Market, a giant, open-air farmer’s market located on the enormous block between Gansevoort and Little West 12th streets, Washington and West Streets, officially opened for business on June 15,…
Read More…mean, part of what we also believed in was, you know, little cars in the city, no gas-guzzlers. That picture shows not only our funny little car, because Jane bought…
Read More…for Trude Heller’s, a rock club on 6th Avenue and 9th Street, features a little illustration of the proprietor herself. Accounts of the day say that Trude’s featured live rock…
Read More…and curve the edges away from the tip, forming a pretty little moon. Put the little moons on a tray, cover them, and proof them in a warm, draft-free place…
Read More…the rents of the stores are the same, then you don’t have a little bakery or a little doughnut shop. It’s all chain things.” Help GVSHP support local businesses. Read…
Read More…York City). So the cost of housing in New York City seems to have little if anything to do with the amount of housing we have relative to our population…
Read More…John Wayne,” he made the “international style” of glass, steel, and concrete the lingua franca of architecture. Which may make it more than a little surprising to learn that he…
Read More…find out more about the Civic Institutions of Little Ukraine in the East Village here. You can also check out our East Village Building Blocks tour of Little Ukraine here….
Read More…depot. By 1880, the City declared that the block bounded today by Gansevoort, Little West 12th, Washington and West streets, plus blocks to the west on landfill, would become a…
Read More…become really grim and awful,” she recalled. A certain kind of “restaurant preservation” is afoot that, while amusing to the wealthy, has little to do with most people’s wallets or…
Read More…the window openings, the chimney pots on top of the building, which are real fireplaces below, the little, and they’re wonderful little apartments.” Washington Court “I’ve always been very proud…
Read More…whose residents are mostly low-to-moderate income and manage to hang on only because current zoning rules make it hard to remove them or provide little incentive for doing so. The…
Read More…in spite of appearances to the contrary, these buildings were built at the same time, probably jointly. A contemporary newspaper account of the fire. Sure enough, a little digging found…
Read More…on songs like “One Rainy Wish,” “Little Wing” and “Drifting.” “Little Wing” is painfully short and painfully beautiful. It’s like your grandfather coming back from the dead and hanging out…
Read More…has given passersby an opportunity for a rare glimpse at an unusual set of backhouses, and Off the Grid an opportunity to shed a little light on this delightful and…
Read More…during their busiest season. Read Blog Post Little Red School House/Elisabeth Irwin High School Ninety years ago, educator, psychologist, and reformer Elisabeth Irwin founded the Little Red School House, an…
Read More…arose to meet the needs of the many who had little time or money to spend on food. Sold by street vendors in slices, pizza consisted of flatbread topped with…
Read More…community participation. Participants, however, got little in return for their effort. The outcome of this process was unceremoniously cast aside in favor of the ham-fisted plan that the City ultimately…
Read MoreOn these chilly late-January days, a little virtual trip through some lush, breezy gardens might just help to lift the spirits. With our recent launch of East Village Building Blocks,…
Read More…the Village Vanguard on Charles Street a year earlier, and even had a little place called the Village Fair on Sullivan Street before that. Though initially billed as a spot…
Read More…at least the haystack was now a little smaller. Scouring the image for more clues, however, I noticed something more peculiar. The building to the left of the Greek Revival…
Read More…Plaza at Little West 12th Street. Join in and have an opportunity to learn Martha Graham’s 19 Poses at the VILLAGE VOICES installation A Monument to Choice. Taken from groundbreaking,…
Read More…Commune and the execution and deportation of the Communards, a journalist in Scribner’s Monthly wrote: “I CONFESS to finding no little pleasure in lazy explorations of the region that lies west of…
Read More…with people and having a little store — a neighborhood shop. People stop by! You know them!” Notwithstanding the challenges of running a store, Lori McLean soon found a following…
Read MoreCaffe Reggio, via Prayitno/Flickr Many think of Little Italy’s Mulberry Street or the Bronx’s Arthur Avenue as the centers of Italian-American life and culture in New York. But some of the…
Read More…lived in no. 130, and Louisa May Alcott is said to have written parts of Little Women while staying there. Little Red Schoolhouse 200-202 Bleecker Street Continue down MacDougal Street…
Read More…For over 40 years, the little shop on the corner of Waverly Place and West 10th Street had remained the stalwart of independence; a bookstore that withstood the onslaught of…
Read More…would imply, located along charming Charlton, King, and VanDam Streets between Sixth Avenue and Varick Streets, with a little arm extending up the southernmost block of MacDougal Street just below…
Read More…so quickly. Though small, Gansevoort Market is such an important neighborhood, because it celebrates our industrial past and because there is so little of that left in Manhattan. We are…
Read More…searching for an answer, which led to even more information about these little buildings of yesteryear. The photo in question from last week’s post: Minetta Place probably from the 1920s….
Read More…negatives from his archive and began scanning. He was stunned to rediscover these images, made with little artifice, unforced in their clarity. It was like looking at New York as…
Read More…lived in; some scholars believe Louisa May may have written parts of “Little Women” while living here. Built in 1845, the surviving iron veranda surround is quite rare. NYU now…
Read More…The drawing requires little explanation, illustrating, as it does, those concerns and indicting the rezoning for using false promises of affordable housing to rationalize an enormous giveaway to developers and…
Read More…had chosen an operatic career. Justus was too much the rebel and the dreamer, however, to care about such things. The rear room of his little place on First Street…
Read More…scrumptious as it ever was, and absence has made the heart grow fonder. Welcome back to the Marin/Marmolejo family and their miraculous Mexican food! The Little Taco House At 246…
Read More…little bit at odds with the world, so little attention had they received since they reached this port.” Another Titanic connection is the R.H. Macy & Co. Store, 14th Street…
Read More…1924 and became a celebrated writer and social critic in his lifetime, exploring complicated issues such as racial, sexual, and class tensions, as a gay African-American man. Baldwin spent some…
Read More…affordable, rent regulated housing, whose residents are mostly low-to-moderate income and manage to hang on only because current zoning rules make it hard to remove them or provide little incentive…
Read More…family business. Jason learns that Tom’s dedication to Veselka produces delicious food that satisfies a colorful cast of neighbors and newcomers, but this leaves little time for Tom to be…
Read More…rare glimpse at an unusual set of backhouses, and Off the Grid an opportunity to shed a little light on this delightful and surprising class of buildings. Hidden from view…
Read More…the West Village’s peculiar magic. Twin Peaks, at 102 Bedford Street, with 100 Bedford Street, the former shed behind 17 Grove Street and “The Little House,” in the foreground. As…
Read More…vulnerable residents of Chinatown and Little Italy in our analysis. To do that, we used the smallest publicly available unit of demographic data for the area in question: census tracts….
Read More…a program on the history of 121 Charles Street, known as the little wooden farmhouse in the Village, or as we like to call it, “the little house that could.”…
Read More…the top image (with a little “movie magic” from us at GVSHP), the answer is the six-story tenement building at 19 Grove Street. Built in 1891, it was a little…
Read More…incentivizing the demolition of rent-regulated affordable housing and encouraging new development with little or no affordable housing — all critiques by Village Preservation. The Commission responded with continued lies about…
Read More…romantic. The little two story house at No. 185, which deftly appears to be a single story, started out life as the carriage house for the owners of a townhouse…
Read More…you get interested in that? Hiphop. When you study the African-American oral tradition and learn about the griot traditions of West Africa, you learn how many small languages are dying….
Read More…background in Civil Rights and social justice, specifically the area known as “Little Africa” Read more about the Seven to Save List designation here. Read about GVSHP’s efforts to protect the…
Read More…the workforce, and quickly began working to address a whole range of issues facing African-Americans at the time. The Congress was developed following a meeting held at Howard University in…
Read More…most of her life. With a strong focus on people of African descent, her involvement began with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and attending the former Malcolm X Liberation University….
Read More…West 3rd and running along Bleecker Street. The African-American section, or “Africa,” is situated along Cornelia, the Minettas, and Bleecker Streets. “Old Families,” “Aristocrats,” and the “Idle Rich” live along…
Read More…Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Hew worked tirelessly to document historical sites and artifacts related to Slavery and the African Diaspora. They collaborated with SCAD and the St….
Read More…producer. Her expertise is Haitian, Afro-Latinx and circum-Caribbean identities within larger questions of activism, memory and migration. As a Henry MacCracken Fellow at New York University (M.A., Africana Studies), she…
Read More…It was the headquarters of the NAACP, the country’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, and W.E.B. DuBois’ The Crisis magazine, the nation’s first African American magazine, a vital voice…
Read More…day. Certain key themes will also be discussed and in the case of the South Village, the social and cultural history of the area was explored including Little Africa, Italian…
Read More…world of schools designed by master school architect C.B.J. Snyder; explore them all. Learn about the African Free Schools located in our neighborhoods; pioneering progressive educational institution Little Red School…
Read More…labor, and civil rights movements to affect major improvements in how African Americans are treated in America. He was an artist who lived at Westbeth in the West Village, and…
Read More…creative nonfiction. She is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her writing and scholarship primarily focus on the history of Black thought, art, and imagination crafted in…
Read More…focuses on the area around Bleecker and Carmine streets from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. (1st-5th grade) African American History, Greenwich Village and Beyond covers pre-European settlement through…
Read More…and early 20th century, when the Village was the center of New York’s African-American community, many of the residents of Gay Street were black, and many were musicians (read more…
Read More…in American history, and one of the most important milestones in the journey to legal and political freedom and equality for African-Americans. The Village and East Village played an outsized…
Read MorePage from LPC’s List of 25 African-American Sites. Courtesy of LPC website. In honor of Black History Month, the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) has released a list of 25 designated…
Read More…New York City deserves to be protected because of its connection to LGBT history, the way it has for underground railroad sites, the African Burial Ground, the Apollo Theater, or…
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