Welcome to February, and African American History Month! Village Preservation has long documented the stories behind the streets, buildings and people of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. Those investigations have enabled us to offer several great resources to learn more about our neighborhoods, including our African American history, including our Civil Rights and […]
Tension was high on the streets of Manhattan on July 13, 1863. Two days earlier, the federal Conscription Act took effect in New York City, establishing a draft lottery to select new soldiers for the Union Army. As Blacks were not allowed to serve in the military and the wealthy could buy their way out […]
Margaret Mitchell’s classic but controversial novel, Gone with the Wind, remains one of our country’s most popular pieces of literature, with over 30 million copies printed worldwide. In a 2014 Harris poll, only the Bible fared more popular in the eyes of American readers. While many are familiar with the novel’s story depicting the misadventures […]
Greenwich Village has long been the home of many of New York City’s most radical social justice advocates. With Village Preservation’s interactive map of the Greenwich Village Historic District we can take a virtual walk through the neighborhood to visit the homes of many of these remarkable activists. One recent addition to that map is […]
Throughout the 20th century, the area south of Union Square attracted painters, writers, publishers, and radical social organizations, many of whom were challenging accepted American social and cultural ideals. The release on February 8, 1915 of The Birth of a Nation — a silent white supremacist propaganda film credited with both resurrecting the Ku Klux […]
Civil War Major General Daniel E. Sickles had one of history’s most contentious, strange, and multifarious biographies.
Greenwich Village has long been the home of many of history’s most important social change champions. Now, using Village Preservation’s interactive map of the Greenwich Village Historic District, we can take a virtual walk through the neighborhood to visit the homes of these remarkable individuals. Get to know a nineteenth century abolitionist, an early-twentieth century […]
Part of our blog series Why Isn’t This Landmarked?, where we look at buildings in our area we’re fighting to protect that are worthy of landmark designation, but somehow aren’t landmarked. The area south of Union Square is full of buildings rich in architectural and social history which need and deserve historic district (landmark) protections. We […]
The Abyssinian Baptist Church at 136-142 West 138th Street is the home of the second oldest African-American congregation in Manhattan, and has long been a center of civil rights and social justice activism.
The buildings we pass in our neighborhoods can offer windows into some rather specific aspects of New York history, and the interesting and sometimes complicated figures involved in the city’s development. One prominent example is what we can learn from some buildings in our neighborhood about public bathing habits and hygiene during the 19th century. […]
“What thoughts I have of you, tonight, Walt Whitman.” This opening line of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “A Supermarket in California,” draws meandering inspiration from one of New York’s most renowned meanderers, Walt Whitman, who was born on May 31, 1819. But the admiration of noted East Village poet Allen Ginsberg is only one of many connections […]
Most of us have just celebrated the unofficial beginning of summer with the Memorial Day weekend. The first Memorial Day, though, was observed on May 30, 1868, to honor those who died in the Civil War. Flowers were placed on the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers in Arlington National Cemetery. In 1873, New […]
As I was considering a topic for last week’s Presidents’ Day post, I came across a great find from our nation’s past that took place right here in present-day NoHo. To my delight, the anniversary of this historic event was right around the corner, today in fact! Yes, on February 27, 1860, relatively unknown presidential […]
On July 13, 1863 began several days of violence in New York City known as the Draft Riots. These civil disturbances rocked New York City and revealed a deep racial and class divide that existed in New York City in 1863, one that was particularly visible in the Far West and South Village.
