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 […]
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 […]
This is one in a series of posts marking the 50th anniversary of the designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District. Click here to check out our year-long activities and celebrations. The Greenwich Village Historic District is one of New York’s oldest historic districts. As we approach the 50th anniversary of its designation, we’re taking […]
Folk music icon Woody Guthrie was a little man with beady eyes – as described by his second wife Marjorie, though she had imagined him to be taller, strapping, and more like a proper cowboy than he was. Perhaps it was because of his Dust Bowl Ballads, his first album, chronicling his travels from Dust […]
He blew into town on a cold January day in 1961, slammed the door of his car, walked into Café Wha and landed a gig that night. That’s the legend, anyway. Truth is that he slogged around uptown hustling for gigs in the Theater District for months before the Village beckoned. But once he found […]
Bob Dylan in Sheridan Square The South Village has many reasons to be celebrated these days. Of course, the (hopefully) impending designation of the Sullivan Thompson Historic District is a big story for GVSHP. Our 13-year quest to protect all of the areas of the South Village is finally coming to fruition with the potential […]
There is an absurdity in the photos and video which depict the event now known as “The Beatnik Riots” in Washington Square Park on April 9, 1961. At face value, the key characters in this drama are earnest, clean-shaven, bespectacled, young men in jacket and tie, and young ladies coiffed and dressed much in the […]
Singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie was born on this day 104 years ago. Although he passed away in 1967, he remains a strong influence on many contemporary artists.
There are some that mark the beginning Greenwich Village’s involvement with the revival of American Folk music as 9 April 1961, with the ‘Beatnik Riot’ in Washington Square Park. But folk music was thriving in the Village long before, with folk musicians holding ‘hootenannies’ and gathering in the park to play and socialize from the […]
The exact date is impossible to confirm. But it is widely accepted that Bob Dylan arrived in New York City on 24 January 1961, in the midst of the coldest winter New York had seen in 28 years. He’d dropped out of the University of Minnesota, and spent the last twenty-four hours driving east with […]
Folk icon Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie was born July 14, 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma, and died fifty-five years later of Huntington’s disease in his adopted hometown of New York City. In between, he spent a lot of time in Greenwich Village.
Louisiana’s notorious Angola State Prison. Folk singer Pete Seeger. The Dry Dock District in Alphabet City. The Library of Congress. Kurt Cobain. http://youtu.be/mcXYz0gtJeM?t=15s Seemingly unrelated, right? Not exactly. They are all connected to legendary folk musician Huddie William “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, who died from Lou Gehrig’s disease on December 6, 1949. If you don’t know […]
