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Tag: Andy Warhol

Hip-Hop’s 2nd Birthplace, Part 6: Fab 5 Freddy

Hip Hop at 50This is the sixth in a series of posts that celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Birth of Hip Hop. Our exploration takes us to the seminal places of Hip Hop’s early days in our neighborhoods and introduces some of the instrumental figures in the downtown world of Hip Hop. You can also explore our […]

April in the Archives

April is a wonderful time in New York City, as we transition into spring with flowers blooming and people filling the streets once again. Today we explore April through our Historic Image Archive — a carefully curated collection of nearly 4,000 images of our neighborhoods and New York City from the late 18th through the […]

    Slugger Ann and Jackie Curtis — Part of the East Village Family

    Some bars come and some bars go, and some are never forgotten. Slugger Ann bar and cocktail lounge was located at 301 East 12th Street/192 Second Avenue at the corner of East 12th Street and 2nd Avenue and witnessed more than a quarter century of transformation in the East Village.  The bar’s eponymous owner was […]

      Things We’re Looking Forward To Doing Again

      We’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about things we used to do before the coronavirus outbreak, that we’re looking forward to hopefully doing again once things return to ‘normal.’  We’ve also been spending a lot of time going through our historic image archive at www.archive.gvshp.org, remembering some of those once-common activities, and just […]

      Penny Arcade’s Village Preservation Oral History – Chronicles of the Queen of Downtown

      GVSHP shares our oral history collection with the public, highlighting some of the people and stories that make Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo such unique and vibrant neighborhoods. Each includes the experiences and insights of leaders or long-time participants in the arts, culture, preservation, business, or civic life. “Hi, my name is Susana […]

      ‘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 […]

      The Exploding Plastic Inevitable featuring the Velvet Underground

      On April 1, 1966, the Velvet Underground and Nico began their residency at 19-25 St. Mark’s Place in the space that would become the Electric Circus, as part of Andy Warhol’s ‘Exploding Plastic Inevitable.’  It was this month-long series of performances, attended by a who’s who of Downtown’s avant-garde and Uptown’s glitterati, which perhaps more […]

      Allen Ginsberg’s East Village Haunts

      We recently came across a video on YouTube of what looks almost like silent home movies of beat writers Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and several others gathering at an East Village bar, the Harmony Bar & Restaurant. This rare footage was shot in 1959 on 16mm film, and the others identified in the footage include […]

        Eight Years Off the Grid

        GVSHP launched our blog Off the Grid on February 25, 2011, to share news, research, viewpoints, and historic information about our neighborhoods and beyond. Since then, we have written over 2,000 blog posts (wow!). In honor of our 8th Anniversary, we wanted to look back at our most popular blog post of each year:

        Nico Captured by Fred McDarrah

        On January 7, 1967, German-born singer Nico performed with The Velvet Underground at Steve Paul’s nightclub, the Scene, and this moment was captured stunningly in a photograph by Fred W. McDarrah. McDarrah was the photographer behind the Village Voice at the time and he had a fifty-year association with the paper that chronicled the post-War […]

        Dylan and the Village on Film

        The Village in the 1960s was a hotbed of creativity. In one of the most defining moments of that decade, in January 1961, a twenty-year-old Bob Dylan moved here to play the clubs and become a recording artist. Photographer Fred W. McDarrah was the photographer behind the Village Voice at the time. McDarrah had a […]

        When Maxfield Parrish’s Magic Came to Greenwich Village

        The great American artist and illustrator Maxfield Parrish was born on July 25, 1870 in Philadelphia.  Born Frederick Parrish, he died more than ninety-five years later on March 30, 1966 in Plainfield, New Hampshire.  In between, he created some of the most stunning, iconic, and memorable paintings and illustrations of the late 19th and early […]

        Anthology Film Archives — 2018 Village Awardee

        Anthology Film Archives is an international center dedicated to the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema. GVSHP is proud to honor Anthology Film Archives with a 2018 Village Awards at our upcoming June 6th Annual Meeting & Award Ceremony. Click here for more information about the event and […]

        Valerie Solanas: Questions, Context, and a Messy Legacy in the Village

        Valerie Solanas (April 9, 1936 – April 25, 1988) is nothing if not divisive. She was a mysterious Villager known for being a radical lesbian feminist separatist, for writing the wild, controversial SCUM Manifesto, for shooting Andy Warhol and two others at Warhol’s Factory in Union Square and defending herself at her trial. It’s clear that what is known […]

        How an East Village building went from gangster hangout to Andy Warhol’s Electric Circus

        Fifty years ago this week, the Velvet Underground released their second album, “White Light/White Heat.” Their darkest record, it was also arguably the Velvet’s most influential, inspiring a generation of alternative musicians with the noisy, distorted sound with which the band came to be so closely identified. Perhaps the place with which the Velvets have come to […]

        The Women’s House of Detention

        To walk by the verdant, lush garden behind the graceful Jefferson Market Library today, one can scarcely imagine that it was once the site of an eleven-story prison, the notorious Women’s House of Detention. Found on our Civil Rights and Social Justice map, this former imposing edifice served as a prison from its opening on […]

        On This Day: Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side”

        On November 8, 1972, Walk on the Wild Side, Lou Reed’s classic paean to downtown New York, and some of the more prominent characters that occupied that space and time, was released. the original single At the time, Walk on the Wild Side was groundbreaking in many ways — musically, lyrically, thematically.  Though it’s now comfortably […]

        Jean-Michel Basquiat and the East Village art scene of the 1980’s

        Jean-Michel Basquiat’s life and work are synonymous with the East Village/NoHo art scene of the 1980’s.  From his early years as a burgeoning young artist while studying at City-as-School, a progressive high school Village Preservation proposed for historic district designation which operates on the principles of John Dewey’s theory that students learn by doing, Basquiat was […]

        Happy Birthday, Truman Capote

        The writer we know as Truman Capote was born Truman Streckfus Persons on September 30, 1924 in New Orleans. Although he grew up in the South, he and his family moved to New York in 1933, where he lived until moving to Connecticut in 1939. In 1942 the family returned to New York, and soon […]

        Happy Birthday Lou Reed

        Famed Rock n Roll legend and Greenwich Village icon, Lou Reed, was born on March 2, 1942.Reed grew up on Long Island and moved to New York City at the early age of twenty and co-founded the groundbreaking band the Velvet Underground with fellow musician John Cale. From a previous Off the Grid post on […]

          On This Day: Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”

          Lou Reed’s classic paean to downtown New York and some of the more prominent characters that occupied that space and time, Walk on the Wild Side, was released on November 8, 1972. At the time, Walk on the Wild Side was groundbreaking in many ways — musically, lyrically, thematically.  Though it’s now comfortably middle-aged, the song […]

          She Shot Andy Warhol

          The 1960’s was a turbulent decade marked by numerous notable murders, assassinations, and attempted assassinations (some of which, like the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, the Bobby Kennedy assassination, and the murder of Kitty Genovese, have previously been chronicled on Off the Grid). But one may have shook downtown more deeply and personally than any […]

          Remembering Lou Reed

          The world mourned the passing of Lou Reed this past weekend at the age of 71. Front man of The Velvet Underground, Reed was born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, and came to epitomize the raw New York City experience of the 1960s and 1970s. As with many of the great artists of […]

          Jefferson Market Garden

          On Monday evening I attended the Jefferson Market Garden Friends’ Annual Garden Party. If you are already familiar with the Jefferson Market Garden (a 1991 Village Award winner), there’s no need for me to tell you what a wonderful place this is. If you are not, then allow me to tell you a story about […]

          What an Electrifying Past: 19-25 St. Marks Place

          One of the many wonderful things about the East Village is the fascinating layers of history that convey the evolution of the neighborhood. The buildings at 19-23 St. Mark’s Place are an excellent example of how the East Village has changed over time from a wealthy merchants neighborhood, to a landing spot for immigrants, to […]