Greek Revival: Gone But Not Forgotten in Our Neighborhoods
Village Preservation’s Greek Revival Bicentennial Storymap celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Greek War of Independence.
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Tag: Dorothy Day
African American, Feminist, & LGBTQ Solidarity at the Women’s House of Detention
The Women’s House of Detention, an eleven-story prison in the center of Greenwich Village, closed on June 13th, 1971.
Explore Village History with#NewYorkFromHome
With the city slowing down and most New Yorkers at home, our partners at Urban Archive are promoting NYC’s rich cultural gems online. Village Preservation has twenty tours and stories on Urban Archive. We have assembled a select group of four collections for you to explore today, but you can explore all twenty here.
Thomas Merton: Trappist Monk and Civil Rights Activist
One afternoon in 1939 or 1940, a young Ph.D. student and aspiring writer named Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was sitting on the floor of his one-bedroom apartment at 35 Perry Street eating scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee with a couple friends who had lingered after the previous night out. As […]
Readers Choice: Top 5 Off the Grid Blog Posts of 2018
Each year GVSHP writes almost 250 blog posts, with our staff (the authors) competing to write the best, most popular posts. Today, we look back on our five most popular posts of 2018, as chosen by our readers:
Dorothy Day
“We need to change the system. We need to overthrow, not the government, as the authorities are always accusing the Communists [of conspiring to do], but this rotten, decadent, putrid industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering in the whited sepulcher of New York.” Such are the words of the “radical Christian,” Dorothy Day, who […]
15 Trailblazing Women of Greenwich Village and the East Village
Greenwich Village is well known as the home to libertines in the 1920s and feminists in the 1960s and ’70s. But going back to at least the 19th century, the neighborhoods now known as Greenwich Village, the East Village, and Noho were home to pioneering women who defied convention and changed the course of history, […]
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 […]
Community Cornerstone: Maryhouse
With the approach of Thanksgiving this week, we here at Off the Grid are taking stock of all the things we have to be thankful for. For many, the Thanksgiving holiday is a time to share with friends and family. It is also a time for reflection and giving. So I thought I would begin […]
The Center of the Italian Community in the East Village: Mary Help of Christians
Many vestiges of the immigrant communities that called the East Village home remain to this day. The area in and around First Avenue and Avenue B between East 11th and East 12th Street was once a thriving Italian-American community. Our research on each of the thousands of buildings in the East Village has helped us […]