April is National Poetry Month! Launched by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, the month of April marks a marvelous opportunity to celebrate the expressiveness, delight, and pure charm of poetry. National Poetry Month reminds us of the integral role of poets and poetry in our culture. It is only fitting to recognize several […]
December is South Village Month – join us in celebrating this vibrant neighborhood all month long! The South Village in the 50s and 60s was a hotbed of creativity and activism. Where the West Village might be known as the heart of the neighborhood, the area south could be called its soul. Sullivan Street, Thompson Street, MacDougal […]
April is National Poetry Month! Launched by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, the month of April marks a marvelous opportunity to celebrate the expressiveness, delight, and pure charm of poetry. National Poetry Month reminds us of the integral role of poets and poetry in our culture. It is only fitting to recognize several […]
Village Preservation is pleased to announce the launch of VILLAGE VOICES, an outdoor exhibition celebrating people, places, and moments from our neighborhoods’ history. VILLAGE VOICES will be an engaging installation of exhibit boxes displayed throughout our neighborhoods featuring photographs, artifacts, and recorded narration that will provide entertaining and illuminating insight into our momentous heritage. We are […]
Woman Crush Wednesday is our day to celebrate and highlight the trailblazing and inspiring women who made all kinds of things happen in the world from right here in our neighborhoods. And none are so rocking as the amazing Patti Smith. Singer, songwriter, and poet Patricia Lee Smith was born on December 30, 1946, in […]
Bob Dylan (born May 24, 1941) began his legendary career in Greenwich Village. The storied clubs and coffee houses in the neighborhood were the incubators for his formidable talent and work. You’ll find some surprises about him and his connections to the Village in our list of 80 Things We Love About Bob Dylan. We […]
Each year, Village Preservation honors the invaluable people, businesses, and organizations that make a special contribution to our neighborhoods at our Annual Meeting and Village Awards. This year, on June 16th, 2020 at 6 PM we will be celebrating seven outstanding awardees — RSVP here to participate virtually. The Village Awards is really one of our very […]
Looking for a great read about Greenwich Village or the East Village? Check out this list of always essential classics, and scroll to the bottom for a list of websites of local independent bookstores where you may be able to order these or other fine reading material. THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES […]
You will be hard pressed to find an establishment in New York City that has survived for as long as 92 years! Well my friends, Caffe Reggio has earned that distinction. Located at 119 MacDougal Street and celebrating its birthday on August 29th, Caffe Reggio opened in 1927 and is one of this writer’s favorite […]
It’s rare to become a published poet by age 16, finding yourself praised by the some of the foremost Beatnik writers. It’s even rarer when no less than Patti Smith says that by age 21 you were ‘pretty much universally recognized as the best poet” of your generation. Add to that having your first album […]
New Yorkers love their small businesses, so it was no surprise that the plight of East Village mainstay Gem Spa drew so much attention and support from local residents and visitors alike. The almost 80-year-old corner stand has always sold a plethora of handy items, from snacks to newspapers, drinks to hats, toiletries and sunglasses […]
People commonly note that Bleecker Street is a far cry from what it was half a century ago, with high-end retail chains replacing its bohemian past. But, thankfully, a few stars of that era have stayed alive, including the well-known music venue The Bitter End at 147 Bleecker Street. Since its opening in 1961, The […]
The East Village is generally credited with being the birthplace of punk music, which emanated from CBGB in the mid-1970s and the bands who played there, including the Ramones, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and the Dictators. The music’s roots also can be found in the neighborhood, especially from bands like the Velvet Underground […]
If only these old bones could talk! Well, in the case of Rick Kelly and his amazing craft, the old bones can indeed talk, or sing, if you will. Rick Kelly is a luthier who crafts bespoke guitars from the reclaimed wood that once belonged to buildings around the city. Rick’s guitars are like having […]
We all know that New York University has an enormous presence in Greenwich Village and the East Village — one that has grown tremendously in recent decades, and is continuing to grow with the construction of their “NYU 2031” expanded campus on the Washington Square Village and Silver Towers superblocks south of Washington Square. The […]
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, […]
If you happen to look up while strolling down Bond or Lafayette Streets, you might come upon a curious sight – dozens of small, golden statues dancing along the wrought iron and brick of a traditional NoHo facade. Celebratory and airy, they’re a delightful addition to the heavy, industrial look of the rest of the […]
“…But who knows what is real anyway? Reality is overrated. What remains are the words scrawled upon an unwinding panorama, vestiges of dusty stills peeled from memory, a threnody of gone voices drifting across the American plain. The One Inside is a coalescing atlas marked by the boot heels of one who instinctively tramps, with open […]
The following is an updated re-posting originally authored by Dana Schulz. As May is Lower East Side History Month, we at GVSHP thought it would be nice to revisit a post from 2012 which gives a nod to ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects,’ the British Museum’s BBC radio series and book.” We […]
On April 23, 1976, the Ramones self-titled debut album was released, changing the face of music forever. Clocking in at just 29 minutes, ‘The Ramones’ was the absolute antithesis of the bloated, album-oriented, arena rock of the era. It was quick, it was simple, and anyone could play it in their basement or local bar […]
On Saturday, December 10, 2016, the extraordinary Patti Smith accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature on behalf of Bob Dylan in Stockholm, Sweden. In a transcendent performance, Smith was overwhelmed with emotion when she stopped mid-performance only to begin again and drive home her powerful rendition of Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” to a […]
On this day in 1979, The Talking Heads released their single ‘Life During Wartime‘ from the album Fear of Music. The song not only went on the be a classic of the band’s, the era, and the genre, but perhaps no song better captured the anarchic, chaotic, and ultimately creative feeling of the East Village/Lower […]
On December 13, 1975, Patti Smith’s album ‘Horses’ was released. Simply put, music was never the same again.
Kenny’s Castaways, the music venue which has been located on Bleecker Street near Thompson Street since 1976, will stage its last performance tonight. Citing rising rents and a decreased audience, the storefront at 157 Bleecker will become a gastro pub that will also feature music, according to the New York Times.
CBGB, the legendary rock club on the Bowery and Bleecker closed its doors on October 15, 2006, due to lease issues, 33 years after it opened. The last evening at CBGB’s featured a headline set by Patti Smith, an unforgettable evening outlined by one fan in a recent blog post.
