Every June, New Yorkers and people from around the world gather in our city to celebrate Pride Month and honor the memory of the Stonewall Riots, three nights in 1969 that helped launch the modern fight for LGBTQ+ rights. And while the Stonewall Inn at 53 Christopher Street is indeed a landmark of that movement […]
May is coming just around the proverbial corner on our calendars. Those 31 days bring us Preservation Month, when we celebrate historic sites across the country as well as highlight the social, cultural, and economic benefits of their preservation. It’s also a good time to reflect on the noteworthy places and histories that organizations like […]
In the late 19th century the term “boy bar” referred to what we would now call a “gay bar”. This is not to be confused with the boy bar, which was a bar located at 15 1/2 St. Marks place from the early 1980s to mid 1990s. It was well known for its regular drag […]
Although June 1969 is in many ways burned in the public consciousness as the pivotal month for the development of the modern LGBTQIA+ Rights Movement, in many ways, the July which followed may have been just as if not more important. It was that month which saw the establishment of several key organizations and traditions […]
As Village Preservation prepares to unveil a plaque commemorating the “Sip-In” at Julius’ Bar on April 21, 1966, one might wonder about the Mattachine Society of New York, which organized this historic event as part of their broader participation in the 1945-1969 Homophile Movement in New York City and beyond. We know the leaders of […]
A self-proclaimed “gay superhero,” Stormé Delarverie (≅ December 24, 1920 – May 24, 2014, Pronouns: she/her in public, he/him in performance) was a drag king, bouncer, and neighborhood activist who outspokenly protected LGBTQ+ communities in our neighborhoods and Lower Manhattan. Pronounced “Stormy De-Lah-vee-yay,” she made a name for herself as the (alleged) spark that started […]
Historically, our neighborhoods have hosted many independent and unconventional bookstores. These small institutions have helped define the character of our neighborhoods as a literary capital of the Western world. With apartments as small as ours, these bookstores took on the role of collective public living rooms, acting as places of community gathering and organization. But, […]
Telling the stories of incarcerated young men in the 1960s, Fortune and Men’s Eyes was a drama written by John Herbert in 1967 to process and analyze his own experience in Canada’s prison system. It was produced by Greenwich Villager and LGBTQIA+ rights activist David Rothenberg at the Actor’s Playhouse at 100 Seventh Avenue So., […]
Notice: The following text contains references to sexual materials and activities appropriate for mature audiences only. Reader discretion is advised. 835 Washington Street has had many past lives. In the 1930s, it was a humble butcher and meatpacking plant, until the industry declined in the 1950s and ‘60s. Then in the 1970s it was a […]
On January 11, 1967, one of the most beautiful buildings in all of New York was designated an individual landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. 330 Bowery (54 Bond) was built in 1874 and designed by Henry Engelbert in the French Second Empire style. Originally designed as a bank building for the Bond Street Bank, […]
As we close the chapter on yet another wild and successful of year of public programs at Village Preservation, we wanted to take the time to reflect and highlight some of 2021’s best moments. Despite the twists and turns of this year’s ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, we’ve hosted 80 different educational lectures, book talks, and walking […]
Candy Darling (She/Her, November 24, 1944 — March 21, 1974) was a transgender icon and muse for well-known artists and musicians like Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground. Darling was an influential Downtown character throughout the 1960s, often interacting with its creative scene through Seymour Levy’s “Salon” on Bleecker Street. She was one of Andy […]
As with any revolution, there was a spark, which lit the fire fed by years of quieter work and struggle which preceded it. Such is certainly the case with the LGBTQ rights movement, which burst into prominence in our neighborhood on June 28, 1969 with the Stonewall Riots, leading to a new, much more aggressive […]
As we approach LGBTQ+ Pride Weekend, Village Preservation is proud to share with you a wonderful new collection in our historic image archive of donated images from Jillian Jonas chronicling the fiery and flamboyant downtown drag performance scene of the 1990s. Jonas, who was the house photographer at the legendary Boy Bar on St. Mark’s Place, also captured […]
LGBTQ+ Pride and History Month may be in June, but at Village Preservation, we’re working to document, celebrate, and protect the incredibly rich LGBTQ+ history of our neighborhoods, which played such a unique role in this community’s civil rights struggle, 12 months a year (but maybe a little extra in June!). Want to celebrate, educate, […]
Dr. Bruce Raymond Voeller, a pioneer of AIDS research and a significant early gay rights activist, was born on May 12, 1934 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He’s no household name, and his early biography would provide few hints as to why he should be. He graduated from Reed College in 1956, was awarded a five-year fellowship […]
On October 22, 1820, a group of Greenwich Village residents gathered at the home of Catherine Ritter.
The Women’s House of Detention, an eleven-story prison in the center of Greenwich Village, closed on June 13th, 1971.
On January 16th, 2013, Village Preservation sent a letter to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) requesting that it landmark key sites of significance to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) history we had identified. At this time, no buildings in the city were explicitly recognized or protected by the LPC primarily for […]
Sure, our phones might seem to be more curse than blessing sometimes, eating up our time and attention more than we’d like to admit. But of course they have also brought about unbelievable the-future-is-now ways of connecting us all. Google Arts & Culture virtually brings you face to face with some of the most astounding […]
Six sites were recently designated landmarks by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission based on their LGBT history and association, two of which were part of a five-year campaign by Village Preservation: the LGBT Community Center and the former Gay Activists Alliance Firehouse. This comes four years after the first and until recently only NYC individual landmark […]
This June is LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) Pride month as well as the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, and among the many events and announcements was the grand opening of the New York State WorldPride Welcome Center. Where? Greenwich Village, of course. Located at 112 Christopher Street, the new […]
On October 30, 2007, GVSHP submitted a request to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission that they consider 101 Avenue A (6th/7th Streets) in the East Village as an individual New York City landmark. The request attracted quite a bit of attention, and was soon referred to as a push to make the building New York […]
On this date in 2013, GVSHP and Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) unveiled our plaque to memorialize and celebrate Jeanne Manford at the Church of the Village at 13th Street and 7th Avenue. Jeanne had died a few weeks earlier at the age of 92, but forty one years earlier in 1972 she […]
The landmark documentary Paris Is Burning was released in New York on March 13, 1991. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, the film is an intimate peek into New York’s LGBTQ culture, specifically ball competitions, where participants dress, dance, and compete in a number of themed categories. Paris Is Burning received rave reviews upon its release, […]
(This post is the first of a series called Village People: A Who’s Who of Greenwich Village, which will explore some of this intern’s favorite Village people and stories.) 453 6th Avenue is an apparently unremarkable building, now home to a noodle shop. Before being renumbered in the 1920s, this was 145 Sixth Avenue. Murray […]
(This post is part of a series called Village People: A Who’s Who of Greenwich Village, which will explore some of this intern’s favorite Village people and stories.) Djuna Barnes was born in 1892, to a polygamist family at Storm King Mountain, New York. Her father made little effort to support his children, and Djuna’s grandmother […]
(This post is part of a series called Village People: A Who’s Who of Greenwich Village, which will explore some of this intern’s favorite Village people and stories.) 20 East 11th Street now bears a plaque, which tells us that Eleanor Roosevelt lived here while she was First Lady. It says nothing, however, about the […]
(This post is part of a series called Village People: A Who’s Who of Greenwich Village, which will explore some of this intern’s favorite Village people and stories.) Paul Clayton was a mentor and friend to Dave Van Ronk, a friend to Liam Clancy, and later a mentor to Bob Dylan. (It is said that […]
