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Tag: New York Public Library

Library Week, the Landmarks Law, and Our Local Branches

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know,” Albert Einstein once said, “is the location of the library.” So it’s a good thing that four outstanding, historic branches are located in our neighborhoods. This month, we have even more reason to celebrate these institutions during National Library Week, which highlights the ever-growing importance libraries […]

    Beyond the Village and Back: The Juilliard School

    The Juilliard School is one of the world’s most respected schools for the performing arts. Ensconced in its Lincoln Center home for more than 50 years, the school can boast an impressive list of alumni among actors, musicians, playwrights, and dancers: William Hurt, Patti LuPone, Mandy Patinkin, Adam Driver, Tim Blake Nelson, and Christopher Reeve and Robin Williams (roommates in the 1970s), to name a few. And even though Juilliard is best known as an Upper West Side school, its origins in Greenwich Village in the early 20th century tie it in with an even older and more historic local institution.

    Coming Up June 16: Our 31st Annual Village Awards and 41st Annual Meeting

    Each year, Village Preservation honors neighborhood institutions at the Annual Meeting and Village Awards. This fun event highlights and celebrates the invaluable people, places, and organizations that make our neighborhoods some of the most interesting and exceptional in the city. The event also includes a review of Village Preservation’s activities and accomplishments over the last […]

    Why Isn’t This Landmarked?: 55 Fifth Avenue

    Part of our blog series Why Isn’t This Landmarked?, where we look at buildings in our area we’re fighting to protect that are worthy of landmark designation, but somehow aren’t landmarked. The impressive 18-story neo-Renaissance style office building at 55 Fifth Avenue was built in 1912 by Maynicke & Franke. According to the New York Times, the […]

    How the New York Public Library got its start in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo

    With 53 million items and 92 locations across Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island, the New York Public Library (MYPL) is the largest municipal library in the world. It’s also the steward of some of New York’s greatest landmarks, reflecting a century and a quarter of Gotham’s history, and in some cases even more. The roots […]

    Wanda Gág: Village Eccentric, Artist, and Cat Storyteller

    We’re on a roll with children’s book writers of the Village! Read our previous posts about E.B. White, Robert McClosky, Margaret Wise Brown, Maurice Sendak, and Otis Kidwell Burger. Though many creatives found great success in New York and Greenwich Village in their day, many of them have also faded a bit from our collective […]

      Beyond the Village and Back: “Becoming Visible” and The Legacy of Stonewall at the NYPL

      Our Beyond the Village and Back series takes a look at great landmarks in New York City outside of our neighborhoods, finding the sometimes hidden connection to the Village.  Today we take a slightly unorthodox approach of looking back at a groundbreaking exhibit which took place on June 18th, 1994 at one of our city’s most […]

      Landmark Designation of the Ottendorfer Library 1st Floor Interior

      On August 11, 1981, the interior first floor of the Ottendorfer Library received landmark designation from the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission. The building is a prime example of work commissioned for and utilized by the primarily German population of the late 19th and early 20th century, when the East Village was known as […]

      A Stroll Down 14th Street

      From November 1975 to September 1976, artist Roy Colmer photographed more than 3,000 Manhattan doorways to create an art project called Doors, NYC.  The New York Public Library, which houses the collection, notes that the project “was as much an exploration of the serial possibilities of photography as of its ability to capture a place. […]

      Collecting the history of the Village one interview at a time

      This past fall, GVSHP launched a new oral history project. This ongoing project was developed in order to add to our understanding of the South and East Villages, areas in which we are advocating for new protections such as landmarking and rezonings. While we have spent considerable time documenting the architectural history of these neighborhoods, […]