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Tag: Allen Ginsberg

The Beats: A South Village Tour

December is South Village Month – join us in celebrating this vibrant neighborhood all month long! Postwar America in the 1950s through the early 1960s experienced the birth of a movement and style that opposed both government and authority. America’s culture of conformity during that post-war period bred a cultural renaissance that importantly included the Beat poets and […]

Ai Weiwei and The Two East Villages: Part One

This special two-part series explores Ai Weiwei’s experiences in two different East Villages — one in New York and the other in Beijing — both of which were hubs of artistic experimentation and influence. In the first installment, we will delve into Ai Weiwei’s formative years in New York, where he developed both his career […]

Eras of American Literature: Allen Ginsberg & Robert Lowell

At the core of the Beat Generation was beloved East Villager Allen Ginsberg. He challenged the barriers that restricted what writers could print and created a handful of pieces that revolutionized American literature as we know it today. Recently, we discovered an old photograph via the Allen Ginsberg Project that inspired us to take a […]

    The Humble “Nerve Center” of the City: Gem Spa

    The East Village is a rich palimpsest of fascinating histories. If many of them seem to share as their geographic nucleus the corner of 2nd and St Mark’s Place, that’s because, for a hundred years, there stood a 24-hour general store, the mythic stature of which increased with each successive countercultural wave that crashed on […]

      2022 Village Awardee: Jane Friedman and Howl! Arts

      Each year, Village Preservation honors the invaluable people, businesses, and organizations that make a special contribution to our neighborhoods at our Annual Meeting and Village Awards. This year, on June 14, 2022, at 6 PM we will be celebrating seven outstanding awardees — RSVP HERE to attend in person and HERE to participate virtually via […]

      David Amram: Inspiring Musicians in the Village, and Throughout the World

      While our blogs typically focus on the history of our neighborhoods and the incredible trailblazers who came before us, it is particularly satisfying to write about great artists who are still among us.  David Amram is one of those extraordinary people. Village Preservation conducted an oral history with Mr. Amram on January 28, 2014, and […]

      Abbie Hoffman: East Village Counterculture Icon

      Abbie Hoffman, born Abbot Howard Hoffman on November 30, 1936, was an American political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party (“Yippies”) and was a member of the Chicago Seven. A leader of the counterculture movement of the late 1960s and a vocal anti-war proponent, it is no wonder that he found himself in […]

      Ferlinghetti and Rosset: Censorship-Battling Superheroes

      Our neighborhoods are not only places where great literature was written. It’s also where great literature was published, sometimes at great legal peril, and where tectonic-shifting battles against censorship were led and won. Nowhere is that more true than in the area South of Union Square, where art, commerce, and activism collided. And perhaps no […]

      Most Popular Posts of 2019

      2019 has been a huge year for Village Preservation. We celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the Greenwich Village Historic District, fought increasing pressure on Greenwich Village and the East Village below Union Square to become an extension of “Silicon Alley” and “Midtown South”, served thousands of students and adults with our free public programs, testified […]

      Caffe Reggio: A Village Respite Since 1927

      You will be hard pressed to find an establishment in New York City that has survived for as long as 92 years!  Well my friends, Caffe Reggio has earned that distinction.  Located at 119 MacDougal Street and celebrating its birthday on August 29th, Caffe Reggio opened in 1927 and is one of this writer’s favorite […]

        ‘Catholic Boy’ Jim Carroll and The Downtown Scene

        It’s rare to become a published poet by age 16, finding yourself praised by the some of the foremost Beatnik writers.  It’s even rarer when no less than Patti Smith says that by age 21 you were ‘pretty much universally recognized as the best poet” of your generation.  Add to that having your first album […]

        East Village Building Blocks Tour: the LGBTQ East Village

        While the neighboring West Village may have the more well-known sites, the East Village contains a rich assortment of places connected to LGBTQ history, including the homes of noted artists, writers, musicians, and activists. It also holds a vast array of performance venues and gathering spaces that attracted and helped launch the careers of many […]

          Hettie Jones, 2019 Village Awardee

          Hettie Jones is a talented writer, a loving mother and grandmother, a forceful activist, a nurturing teacher, and a friendly neighbor and preservationist. She is the stuff neighborhood dreams are made of. Showing no signs of slowing down at 85, she is easily one of the earth mothers of our community – and we’re thrilled […]

          15 things you didn’t know about the East Village

          Earlier this month, GVSHP launched its East Village Preservation effort, releasing its new website “East Village Building Blocks,” which contains historic information and images for every one of the neighborhood’s 2,200 buildings. Of course, any neighborhood spanning five centuries of history and nearly 100 blocks will reveal some surprises when you scratch the surface. But the East Village’s story has […]

          No One Had Ever Heard a Howl Like That Before

          The Beat poets, inextricably linked with the Village and East Village, materialized in the post-WWII American of white picket fences to celebrate all things messy, countercultural, drug-addled, disenfranchised, and unstoppably vital. East Villager Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” was an anthem of this movement, with its power, breathlessness, and breadth of content. And on October 7, 1955, Ginsberg […]

          Hispanic Heritage Month: Celebrating Nuyorican Poets Cafe

          “For the poor New York Puerto Rican, there are three survival possibilities,” the poet Miguel Algarin wrote in 1975. “The first is to labor for money and exist in eternal debt. “The second is to refuse to trade hours for dollars and to live by your will and ‘hustle.’ “The third possibility is to create […]

            Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish Written Here

            Over the past six months, GVSHP has participated in the CUNY Corp service-learning program that places students in paid internships throughout the City. GVSHP’s intern, Oluwaseun Eleyinafe, a Lehman College Senior, wrote the post below on Allen Ginsberg and his poem ‘Kaddish.’ As one of the writers at the heart of the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg […]

              The HOWL! Festival

              Historically, the Village and East Village have always been the place for artists, writers, performers, and a slew of other creatives in New York City, a fact that is widely celebrated as one of the area’s defining characteristics.  The HOWL! Festival is a celebration of this history.  Founded in 20013 and named for long time […]

              Village People: Allen Ginsberg

              (This post is part of a series called Village People: A Who’s Who of Greenwich Village, which will explore some of this intern’s favorite Village people and stories.) We all know Allen Ginsberg.  He lived in the East Village for more than thirty years, with his partner, Peter Orlovsky. He met Lucien Carr, Jack Kerouac, […]

                LGBTQ History: MacDougal Street

                (This post is the first of a series on the history of the LGBTQ community in Greenwich Village.) It is easy to assume, in the aftermath of the Stonewall riots, that Greenwich Village’s LGBTQ history happened entirely on Christopher Street. Of course, there’s a lot more to LGBTQ history in the Village than Stonewall, just […]

                From the WNYC Archives: Change and Continuity in Greenwich Village

                GVSHP is pleased to partner with WNYC on this post that spotlights their archival collection. WNYC 93.9 FM and AM 820 are New York’s flagship public radio stations, broadcasting the finest programs from NPR, American Public Media, Public Radio International and the BBC World Service, as well as a wide range of award-winning local programming. […]

                The San Remo Cafe: Archive Edition

                Off the Grid often features images from GVSHP’s Preservation Archive and Oral History Project. The image archive includes approximately 300 images from ten different collections that document the architecture, cultural history, and preservation of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. This summer, we were pleased to accept two new images into the archive.

                  All the World’s a Village on Shakespeare’s 450th Birthday

                  Today marks William Shakespeare’s 450th birthday, although some sources say his exact date of birth is unknown. He never set foot in the Village – he lived before it was developed by European settlers – but Shakespeare would likely be pleased with the neighborhood’s vibrant literary history. How many other places can celebrate such a […]

                    Coming Soon — Greenwich Village Stories

                    GVSHP works to preserve the architectural and cultural heritage of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo in many different ways.  Landmark designations and zoning protections, though challenging to secure, can at least ensure the perpetuation of that special physical fabric.  But culture, while inevitably intertwined with that physical fabric, is more ephemeral; harder to quantify, and […]

                    Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the Village

                    Breakfast at Tiffany’s, one of the defining movies of the 1960’s, and defining movies about New York, was released on October 5, 1961.  Long skinny black dresses were never the same again. It’s often understandably assumed that Holly Golightly and Paul Varjack lived in the Village, as the cast of unconventional characters which populated their […]

                    The Hare Krishna Tree

                    In the past Off the Grid has taken a look at some of the architecture surrounding Tompkins Square Park, including St. Brigid’s Church, the Tompkins Square Lodging House for Boys, the Charlie Parker House, and the Tompkins Square Branch of the New York Public Library. Today we thought we would take a look inside the […]

                    Remembering the Fillmore East

                    Forty-four years ago today, music promoter Bill Graham opened the Fillmore East at 105 Second Avenue. This 2,600 seat venue hosted concerts from 1968 to 1971, including performances by the Allman Brothers Band, the Who, and the Doors. The venue was known for launching many seminal bands of the era, and because of its excellent […]