← View All

Tag: union square

Forbidden Planet: 2025 Village Awardee and a Living Archive of Imagined Futures

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 […]

#SouthOfUnionSquare, the Birthplace of American Modernism: Edward Laning

“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 […]

National Farm to City Week Highlights the Bounty of Greenmarkets in our Neighborhoods

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 […]

More Historic Images Show Us What’s Changed and What’s Remained the Same

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 […]

Help us Solve Some Historic Photo Mysteries

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 Tonight to Save Our Neighborhood!

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 […]

Mourning President Lincoln Along Broadway

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. […]

Happy Birthday, George Washington (sort of)

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 […]

Celebrate Labor Day!

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 […]

Checkmate! : Street Chess in the Village

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 […]

Greenwich Village CSAs

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 […]

    Broadway and 14th Street, Then & Now

    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. […]

    State’s ‘Path Through History’ Remains a Mystery

    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 […]

    Skirmish in the Subway: A Not So Merry Christmas for Gangster Monk Eastman

    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 […]

      May Day Past and Present

      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 […]

      On the Square

      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. […]