Village Preservation is proud to honor Forbidden Planet as a 2025 Village Awardee! Join us in recognizing Forbidden Planet and the five other remarkable awardees at Village Preservation’s Annual Meeting and Village Awards on Wednesday, June 11th, at the historic Great Hall at Cooper Union. Registration is free and open to all. Click here to register. At […]
“South of Union Square, the Birthplace of American Modernism” is a series that explores how the area south of Union Square shaped some of the most influential American artists of the 20th century. Throughout the 20th century, the area south of Union Square attracted painters, writers, publishers, and radical social organizations, many of whom were […]
Did you know that National Farm to City Week begins the Thursday before Thanksgiving? This special week celebrates and recognizes the beneficial partnerships between rural and urban communities that make our food supply safe and plentiful. The Thanksgiving season is a time when many Americans gather with their families and reflect upon many blessings. One […]
Emma Goldman was born in Kovno, Lithuania in 1869. By the time she was 23 years old, she was a divorced American citizen under arrest. For everything from being associated with anarchists to “inciting a riot” in Union Square, Emma Goldman served her time. This was just the first of many arrests for this rabble-rouser, […]
One of our most recently landmarked buildings, the Roosevelt Building at 841 Broadway, has an exciting application for alterations which includes the restoration of its piers at the storefront level. Included in this application are some beautiful images of not just the building but Broadway, Union Square, and East 13th Street which we have just […]
On June 11th, 2019, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated seven buildings in the area south of Union Square as individual landmarks. While these seven buildings are just a fraction of a fraction of the buildings we called for to be landmarked in connection with the City’s shady Tech Hub “deal”, and […]
Over 80 new historic photos taken by Carole Teller were recently added to the GVSHP Image Archive. Every time we add photos to our collection, we uncover some great stories, like when a woman emailed us that her mother was the subject of this photo, a man let us know this is the only existing photo of his grandfather, […]
Critical Public Meeting on Saving Third & Fourth Avenue Corridors in the East Village TONIGHT — Wednesday, September 13th Anyone who cares about overdevelopment in the area between 3rd and 5th Avenues, Union Square to Astor Place: Join GVSHP and neighbors at the Community Board #3 Land Use Committee Meeting TONIGHT, Wednesday, September 13 Rutgers Community […]
This is an updated re-posting of a piece originally penned by GVSHP staff member Drew Durniak. It was on April 14, 1865 that President Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot by actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington. The event was the first assassination of an American president and sent shock waves throughout the nation. […]
Browsing through GVSHP’s recently updated image archives, I came across photographs of the Variety Theater, which was, once upon a time, a favorite place of mine to go and see new works of theater. The Variety Arts Theater once stood on the west side of 3rd Avenue between 13th And 14th streets. Built around 1897, […]
This iconic image of activism and advocacy was taken just outside the NAACP’s headquarters on 5th Avenue and 14th Street. The year was 1936, and it was speaking to the crisis of violence and inequality in America. It is estimated that between 1882 and 1951, 4,700 people were lynched in the United States. An overwhelming majority […]
George Washington was born on February 22nd, and his birthday was unofficially celebrated by Americans on that date throughout the 19th century. February 22nd finally became a federal holiday in 1879. The holiday was celebrated on February 22nd until 1968, when Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Law to provide annual observances of certain legal […]
For many people, Labor Day means one last trip to the beach or pool before the unofficial end of summer. Or some need to finish their back-to-school shopping, so it means a day at the stores. How you spend your Labor Day is up to you, but here at Off the Grid we are well […]
Chess tables have been a staple of New York City public parks for decades. While the first ones appeared in parks during the 1940s, the popularity of “street chess” as it is known, came about beginning in the 1960s when a man named Bobby Hayward set up a chess set on top of a garbage […]
The organic food movement is no longer just a trend, but a necessity for many consumers — as evidenced by the long lines endured at grocery stores such as Whole Foods or Traders Joe’s, and the growth of farm-to-table restaurants opening around the city. Although many grocery businesses have expanded their supply of produce to […]
The history of Broadway is a diverse one. In our neighborhood, this famous thoroughfare has seen upscale townhouses be replaced by store-and-loft buildings, many of which have since been converted to apartment buildings. For a long period of time, clothing manufacturing was prevalent here. And where there was clothing manufacturing there were always sewing machines. […]
Union Square is known today as a site of public gathering and for expressions of discontent. This is built upon Union Square’s rich, multi-layered history as a public space in Manhattan. The name of the park comes from its location within the downtown area, placed between, or at the “union,” of the then-Bloomingdale Road and […]
The Hamilton Fish House is a stately home located on lovely Stuyvesant Street in the East Village. It is owned by Cooper Union and serves as the president’s official residence. Should you go there, you can read one plaque designating it a National Historic Landmark, and another one denoting it as a New York City […]
This post is the second of a four-part series called Everyday Lives, Ordinary People: A History of East Village Immigrants, a collaboration between GVSHP and the students in NYU’s Fall 2013 Intro to Public History course. Each group of students was tasked with researching the cultural history of everyday people in the East Village between […]
Twentieth century pop art icon Andy Warhol was born on August 6th, 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But his life as an artist and visual pioneer was very much about New York, largely downtown New York. Warhol certainly made his mark on the Village and East Village, and both, in turn, made their mark on him. […]
Those following May Day protests today might be interested in learning about the day’s long roots in labor history, going back to 1886. May 1, 1886 was selected by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions at a conference in 1884 as a target deadline for labor unions to achieve a standard 8-hour work […]
Jonathan Kuhn, a long-time Village resident who is also the Director of Art & Antiquities at the Department of Parks and Recreation, has curated an exhibition at Central Park’s Arsenal Gallery. Parkcentric: Photographs from the Museum of the City of New York, 1890-1940, features 68 images of 24 parks by the likes of Berenice Abbott, […]
As we enter the final phase of the holiday shopping season we thought we would continue our look at some of the historic retail establishments in our area. Last week we looked at Wanamaker’s huge store and annex near Astor Place. Farther north at Union Square, a major retail presence for decades was the S. […]
