← View All

Tag: Fred W. McDarrah

Fall Auction: A First for Village Preservation

There have been countless “firsts” in our neighborhoods: the first cappuccino machine (Café Reggio), the first building constructed specifically to house artists’ studios (The Tenth Street Studios at 51 West 10th Street, since demolished), the first racially integrated night club (Café Society) — the list goes on and on. While we at Village Preservation have […]

James Baldwin Leaves an Enduring Legacy in Greenwich Village

“For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.”                    -James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues” James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December […]

Making Photographic History #SouthOfUnionSquare

Today we’re celebrating the accomplishments of some historic lenspeople who made their mark in the neighborhood South of Union Square. Photography was one of the many creative industries shaped and transformed by this district (one that has yet to be recognized and protected by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, but you can help preserve the area […]

Cafe Wha & The Fugs

Legendary Village Voice photographer Fred W. McDarrah captured so much about life in New York, and especially downtown, in the latter half of the 20th century. One of many examples: this Saturday night shot of Cafe Wha? on the corner of MacDougal Street and Minetta Lane, when the band The Fugs were performing there, taken on June 25, […]

    Things We’re Looking Forward To Doing Again, Part 4

    We’re continuing to spend 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 exploring the […]

    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 […]

    Demolitions in Our Historic Image Archive: Gone, But Not Forgotten

    Village Preservation is always working hard to document, celebrate, and protect the historic character of our neighborhoods, including the great buildings that make Greenwich Village, NoHo and East Village such wonderful places to live, work and shop.  Of course, we’re not always able to save every historic building from demolition, and some disappeared long before […]

    New Historic McDarrah Photos Added to Historic Image Archive

    The McDarrah family loves the Village. The late Fred W. McDarrah was a leading photojournalist and documentarian of late-20th century Greenwich Village. He was the primary (and often only) photographer for the Village Voice for decades, since the newspaper’s inception in 1955. He captured the counterculture of Greenwich Village and the East Village, Gay Rights, […]

    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 […]

    Remembering Willem de Kooning

    On April 24, 1904, artist and former resident of our neighborhood, Willem de Kooning, was born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He would go on to be one of the 20th century’s leading artists within the Abstract Expressionist movement, a key figure in making New York the center of the art world.