On January 3, 2017, we launched our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map, a unique online resource that marks more than 200 sites in our neighborhoods significant to the history of various civil rights and social justice movements. Since history is never finished, we continue to add new sites and stories with connections to civil […]
You never know what you may find when doing historic research in our neighborhoods, and it often raises more questions than it answers. I was recently looking into the history of a building on Fourth Avenue as part of our campaign to landmark the area south of Union Square. While scanning New York City Directories […]
The East Village is probably not the first neighborhood that comes to mind when most New Yorkers think about African American history. But this incredibly rich, multi-layered neighborhood was home to some remarkably consequential events, places, and figures in African-American history. To help explore just some of them, we have created a new African American […]
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, […]
Exploring African American history in our neighborhoods, today we look at Elizabeth Jennings Graham, a woman who, in her simple quest to get to her church on East 6th Street sparked one of earliest challenges to institutionalized racial discrimination in public accommodations. In 1854 Graham challenged the segregation of New York City’s trasportation system, about […]
