Protest has long been woven into the fabric of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. From Washington Square to Tompkins Square and along countless main thoroughfares, side streets, and parks, our public spaces have served as a forum for dissent and debate. Village Preservation’s Historic Image Archive captures this legacy with remarkable clarity. Through […]
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 […]
Village Preservation began offering an East Village Rock Tour in July, and it has been met with great enthusiasm and large groups gathering to learn more about the history of Rock ‘n Roll in the East 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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
On June 24, 1969, the Stonewall Inn was raided by New York City Police, four nights before the infamous raids that sparked the Stonewall Riots. This was not the first time the police had targeted the bar for a raid, nor would it be the last. That night, in one of a series of what […]
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 […]
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 […]
As we reflect upon the life and legacy of Robert F. Kennedy, his central role in the progress of civil rights in America comes immediately to mind. Kennedy was to become one of the heroes of the movement for his tireless and ultimately successful work through the Department of Justice to secure the Civil Rights […]
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.
Perhaps no single photographer could be said to have captured the energy, the cultural ferment, the reverberating social change emanating from New York City in the second half of the 20th century as vividly as Fred W. McDarrah. McDarrah got his start covering the downtown beat of the Village Voice in the 1950s and ’60s, as that […]
