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Tag: Beat Generation

Where the Beats Sang: Washington Square’s Forgotten Protest

At the start of Fifth Avenue sits the grand Washington Square Arch, welcoming New Yorkers and visitors alike into the heart of Greenwich Village. Today, on a stroll through the park, one might find street artists performing in the empty fountain, college students sharing a quick lunch between classes, and strangers deep in conversation about […]

    Hettie Jones (1934-2024): A Creative Force in Cooper Square

    East Village resident Hettie Jones — beloved writer and poet, committed activist for social justice and preservation, and recipient of Village Preservation’s Village Award in 2019 — passed away on August 13, 2024, at the age of 90. Born in Brooklyn on June 15, 1934, Jones wrote more than 20 books over her long career, […]

    Kerouac and Catholicism in Greenwich Village

    “…really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God.” So said Jack Kerouac about his book, “On the Road,” soon after it was published in 1957. As we’ve discussed on this blog before, though known for his nomadic lifestyle, Kerouac had strong ties to Greenwich Village. Famous as a pioneer […]

    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 […]

    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 […]

      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 […]

      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 […]

        Honoring Patti Smith

        On Saturday, December 10, 2016, the extraordinary Patti Smith accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature on behalf of Bob Dylan in Stockholm, Sweden. In a transcendent performance, Smith was overwhelmed with emotion when she stopped mid-performance only to begin again and drive home her powerful rendition of Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” to a […]

        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, […]

          Soon You Can Spend a Night on 8th Street

          Last week our friends over at Curbed NY broke the news that the former Marlton House at 3 West 8th Street (between 5th & 6th Avenues) was going from New School dorm, which it had been for the past 25 years, to upscale hotel.  According to the NY Post, it will be a “historical boutique […]