Ayo Harrington has lived in the East Village since the 1960s, and been deeply involved in the community garden, urban homesteading, environmental, resiliency, educational equality, and civil rights movements. She first moved here as a teenager to live with her older sister, who was active in radical Black organizing at the time. Ayo followed suit, volunteering with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and attending Malcolm X Liberation University in North Carolina. She also got involved with reclaiming abandoned buildings as housing, including her own home in Alphabet City, which she completed in 1989. Ayo also advocated for the establishment of land trusts to enable housing ownership for people who had collectively reclaimed and rehabilitated residential buildings, and has led numerous efforts to transform abandoned lots into community gardens, including Orchard Alley. In the oral history, Harrington also speaks about her involvement in parents’ rights issues, the protection of the African Burial Ground, outreach about the prison system, and her work as co-chair of LESReady!, a disaster preparedness and long-term recovery organization that emerged in response to Superstorm Sandy.

The views expressed by the contributor(s) are solely those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or endorsement of our organization.

Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation

Ayo Harrington Oral History

From Village Voices 2021: 
Narrated by Jessica Craig Martin
Music: Aaron Copland

Berenice Abbott Village Voices Audio

Featured in Village Voices 2021 and 2022

Narrated by Derek Morris
Music: “Blue in Green” — Miles Davis, w/ John Voltrati and Bill Evans

James Baldwin Village Voices Audio

Featured in Village Voices 2021

Narrated by Andrew Berman

Bob Dylan Village Voices Audio

One of America’s most celebrated 20th-century poets, Cummings wrote poems known for their experimental nature and striking visual layout.

Featured in Village Voices 2021 and 2022

Narrated by Edward Norton

EE Cummings Village Voices Audio

Featured in Village Voices 2021 and 2022

Narrated by Leslie Mason
Music: Aaron Copland

May 11, 1894 - April 1, 1991
Modern Dancer and Choreographer
Revolutionary artist who transformed modern dance. Graham created a unique vocabulary of movement and innovative technique that continues to resonate and influence worldwide.

Martha Graham Village Voices Audio

Featured in Village Voices 2021 and 2022

Narrated by Dr. Imani Perry

May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965
Playwright, Author, and Activist
An outspoken civil rights activist, her seminal play, A Raisin in the Sun, was the first play by a Black female playwright to be produced on Broadway.

Lorraine Hansberry Village Voices Audio

Featured in Village Voices 2022

Narrated by Adam Wienberg
Music: Kurt Weill

July 22, 1882 - May 15, 1967
American Painter and Printmaker
Hopper painted scenes of cool isolation to respond to an increasingly urban but more socially disconnected New York City.

Edward Hopper Village Voices Audio

Featured in Village Voices 2021 and 2022

Narrated by Rachel Maddow
Music: Aaron Copland

May 4, 1916 - April 25, 2006
Activist, Theorist, and Author
Fierce advocate who inspired a generation of preservationists, Jacobs saved Washington Square from a plan to build a highway through lower Manhattan.

Jane Jacobs Village Voices Audio

Musician

Featured in Village Voices 2021 and 2022

Narrated by John Leguizamo

August 29, 1920 - March 12, 1955
Saxophonist, Band Leader, and Composer

A blazing jazz virtuoso and developer of bebop, Parker collaborated with the most accomplished musicians of his time to redefine the genre.

Charlie Parker Village Voices Audio

Artist

Featured in Village Voices 2021 and 2022

Narrated by Norman Reedus

January 28, 1912 - August 11, 1956
Abstract Expressionist and Action Painter

A founder of Abstract Expressionism and developer of the unusual "drip painting" technique, Pollock lived on this site as a young art student.

Jackson Pollack Village Voices Audio

Writer

Poem read by Grace Gummer
Narrated by Leslie Mason
Music: Improvisations for Harp, William Mathias; Saint-Seans “The Swan,” Yo-Yo Ma, cello

February 22, 1892 - October 19, 1950
Sublime Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet
Millay’s reverently irreverent poems captured the savage beauty of life and the unexplored depths of female expression.

Featured in Village Voices 2022

Edna St Vincent Millay Village Voices Audio

Place

Narrated by Kathleen Chalfant
Poem “Shirt” by Robert Pinsky Copland

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - March 25, 1911
One of the deadliest industrial disasters in American history took place at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory at 23 Washington Place, when 146 garment workers, mostly young recent immigrants, died in a fire. The horrific event marked a pivotal shift in American labor policy, building code regulation, and workplace safety laws.

Featured in Village Voices 2021 and 2022

Triangle Shirtwaist Village Voices Audio

Artist

Featured in Village Voices 2021 and 2022

Narrated by Alec Baldwin
Music: John Cage

October 22, 1925 - May 12, 2008
Painter, Sculptor, Photographer, and Performer
 
An eclectic and genre-defying artist who worked across many mediums. His “Combines” transformed found objects from the streets of New York.

Robert Rauschenberg Village Voices Audio

December 30, 1946 – present

Musician, Poet, Writer, Artist, and Activist
Often called the “Punk Poet Laureate,” Smith is indelibly connected to the Village, where she developed and performed a mixture of punk rock and beat poetry. She gave her first public reading of poetry in 1971 at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, 131 East 10th Street.

Narrated by Chris Robertson
Music by Patti Smith: “Because the Night”; “When Doves Cry,” cover of the song by Prince; and “People Have the Power,” recorded at the 2019 Democracy Is Coming event with Stewart Copeland, The Public Theater, Choir! Choir! Choir!, and hundreds of Villagers

Patti Smith Village Voices Audio

Lucy Komisar was a Village Voice reporter who covered the historic ‘Sip In’ at Julius’ Bar, which ended up becoming a watershed moment in the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement. Before and after that, she also covered and was involved in the women’s movement and the movement for black civil rights, having served as a national vice-president of the National Organization for Women and editor of the Mississippi Free Press, among other positions. In her oral history, she talks about the effort to allow women to patronize McSorley’s Bar in the East Village, lunch counter sit-ins in the South, and more.

The Village Preservation Oral History Project includes a collection of interviews with individuals involved in local businesses, culture, and preservation, to gather stories, observations, and insights concerning the changing Greenwich Village. These interviews elucidate the personal resonances of the neighborhood within the biographies of key individuals, and illustrate the evolving neighborhood.

Oral history is a method of collecting memories and histories through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of adding to the historical record.

The recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. Oral history is not intended to present the absolute or complete narrative of events. Oral history is a spoken account by the interviewee in response to questioning. Whenever possible, we encourage readers to listen to the audio recordings to get a greater sense of this meaningful exchange.

The views expressed by contributors to our oral history collection do not necessarily reflect the views of Village Preservation.

Audio Clip from Interview with Lucy Komisar

In the early 1970s Alex Harsley founded, and today continues to operate, both the East Village’s 4th Street Photo Gallery and Minority Photographers, Inc., a non-profit established to support marginalized photographers.

Born and raised on a farm in South Carolina, in 1948 Alex and his family relocated to the Morrisania section of the Bronx. As an adult, he worked as a messenger, traveling around the city and developing an interest in looking at and photographing what he saw. A self-taught photographer, Alex got a job as the first black photographer at the New York City District Attorney’s office in 1958. After a time in the Army, he worked as a freelance photojournalistic photographer, honing his ability to construct an image and tell a story. During this time, he photographed Black political leaders, musicians, life in Harlem, and countless people and cityscapes, amassing thousands of images.

In 1971, Harsley was set up with a non-profit arts organization, which he called Minority Photographers, Inc. For over fifty years, he has used this organization to support marginalized photographers, offering educational sessions, salons, mentoring, career advising, and collaborations with artists. In 1973, Harsley opened the 4th Street Photo Gallery, to show not only his own work but the work of other Black photographers. Within a decade, the gallery was known as a springboard into the world of fine art photography, and has continued to support and launch careers in teaching and art-making, and to function alongside Minority Photographers, Inc.

Today, the 4th Street Photo Gallery features Harsley’s photographic prints––which he changes daily––vintage cameras and technology related to photography, and work by other artists. He continues to create new work and to advocate for a museum of photography to focus on the medium’s history and technological advances in the photographic industry, artifacts used in the photographic process, and the contribution of photographers to the broader field of fine art.

The views expressed by the contributor(s) are solely those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or endorsement of our organization.

Alex Harsley Highlight Clip from Oral History

Jonathan Ned Katz grew up in Greenwich Village in a house on Jane Street and attended the Little Red School House as a kid. There, he was encouraged to make art and found ways to discuss politics and other ideas with fellow “red diaper” babies, or children of members of the Communist Party. Although he found himself in a similar political milieu when he was later a student at the High School of Music & Art, he still felt the impact of the repressive politics of the 1950s, which was reflected in some of the visual art that he created at that time.

After the Stonewall riots, Katz became involved with activism within the gay community through the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). In 1972, the GAA produced his documentary play, Coming Out!, at the firehouse on Wooster Street. Katz then embarked on a much larger documentary project, his book, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the USA, which was published in 1976 at a time when producing such scholarship could “ruin” a career. But through this project especially, and through talking with other gay scholars over subsequent decades, Katz helped establish a network of gay men and lesbians that met regularly for informal group therapy, study, or consciousness raising over the following decades––often in Greenwich Village in the house on Jane Street where Katz lived as a child––enabling Katz, and others, to build the field of LGBT studies and public history.

In this interview, Katz also describes the unique approach to parenting that he experienced; his tenure as a designer at the Jack Prince Studio and the after-work conversations that enabled him to talk about sexuality and gender; anti-racism and the resistance of Black enslaved people; the importance of the naked male body in his artwork; and writing his memoir, Coming of Age in Greenwich Village: A Painter, His Paintings, His Life.

The views expressed by the contributor(s) are solely those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or endorsement of our organization

Jonathan Ned Katz Oral History

Audio Clip from Jonathan Ned Katz Oral History

Margaret “Pi” Halsey Gardiner was born in New York City in 1949. Her family history in New York State spans back several generations, particularly on Long Island, where her great-great-great-grandfather was a whaling captain. She grew up in the MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens, one of several small historic districts in the city consisting of historic row houses with combined backyards that create a private garden space for the community. 

Gardiner’s interest in historic preservation in many ways stemmed directly from her connections to family history in New York State and her interest in historic houses, including the 18th-century home she grew up in and the 18th-century home on Long Island that she purchased as an adult. After living in San Francisco for some years after graduating from college, she returned to New York, working at New York firm Dun & Bradstreet. She found her way to the Merchant’s House on the recommendation of a friend on New Year’s Day, 1988, and immediately felt at home.

Pi Gardiner Oral History

Karen Cooper was born in Manhattan in 1948 and moved to Queens as a small child. She grew  up yearning for the culture and excitement of Manhattan, taking frequent trips on the E and F  trains into the West Village to visit the shops, theaters, and music venues that were abundant in  the neighborhood at the time.  

Cooper was introduced to Film Forum in 1972, in its first iteration: as a one-screen,  one-projector screening space on the Upper West Side running on a yearly operating budget of  $19,000. That same year, she assumed control of Film Forum’s operations, and in the 51 years  following, transformed the theater from a threadbare screening room to an iconic four-screen  institution with a seven million dollar budget. Cooper built three different downtown iterations of  Film Forum, and in 1990, the theater found its final, lasting home on West Houston Street. She  helped to dramatically expand the scope of international and documentary film programming at  Film Forum — and more broadly, within the city’s film landscape.  

Highlights of Cooper’s interview include memories of each of Film Forum’s distinct locations,  discussions of the intersections between her personal, political, and intellectual interests and her  programming choices, and reflections on the changing arts landscape in New York City. 


Karen Cooper Oral History

Kevin McGruder was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio. He received a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University, an M.B.A. in Real Estate Finance from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Before pursuing doctoral studies, he worked for many years in nonprofit community development, including as Program Officer with Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Director of Real Estate Development with the Abyssinian Development Corporation, and Executive Director of Gay Men of African Descent. He is an active member of Other Countries, a Black gay men’s writing collective that was founded in 1986. He is currently an Associate Professor of History at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio.

This oral history includes extensive discussion of Other Countries’ founding and history, particularly its deep roots in the West Village and shifts in the group’s focus during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis. The oral history highlights the group’s different publications and its focus on the importance of print publishing, noting the imperative of being “heard in print,” or preserving legacy in print. McGruder also discusses the queer geography of the West Village and its influence on the intellectual and social lives of himself and his peers, from the bars to the piers. He concludes with reflections on the importance of oral history for preserving social history in a way that the archives alone fail to capture.   


Kevin McGruder Oral History

Richard Barone is an acclaimed recording artist, performer, producer, and author. Barone was born and raised in Tampa, Florida, then moved to New York in the late 1970s. He helped launch the indie rock scene in Hoboken, New Jersey, as frontman of The Bongos, then embarked on an acclaimed solo career after the band’s dissolution in 1987. Barone has produced countless studio recordings and worked with artists in every musical genre. He has scored shows and staged all-star concert events at such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and New York’s Central Park. His memoir FRONTMAN: Surviving The Rock Star Myth was published in 2007 by Hal Leonard Books. His second book, Music + Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2022, and launched at the Museum of the City of New York. His latest album, “Sorrows & Promises,” is a celebration of the early 1960s music scene in Greenwich Village, where Barone lives to this day. He is affiliated with the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU and The New School of Jazz & Contemporary Music, serves on the Board of Governors of The Recording Academy (GRAMMYs), and on the Board of Advisors of Anthology Film Archives.

Highlights of Barone’s oral history include memories of his early encounters with one of his lifelong mentors, Tiny Tim, and stories of folk music history passed down from Tiny Tim. The oral history paints a vivid picture of the social and economic contours of Greenwich Village’s various music scenes in the 1960s and 1970s, augmented by Barone’s own experiences as a working musician. Barone also reflects upon historical practices of songwriting and the folk music tradition of “covers,” framing it as an important and necessary — but easily abused — part of Greenwich Village’s music history. He reflects on changes in the neighborhood’s cultural character and built landscape, while also thinking about ways that local history is built into the streets and walls. 


Richard Barone Oral History

Janet Coleman is a writer, actor, radio producer, and historian of the theater. She worked at the New York Review from 1963 to 1966. She authored both The Compass: The Improvisational Theater That Revolutionized American Comedy and (with Al Young) Mingus/Mingus: Two Memoirs. She is a founding producer of the seminal off-off Broadway's Loft Theatre Workshop. She and her husband David Dozier currently host Cat Radio Café, a “live salon of the arts, exploring the politics of art and the creative bounty of New York,” on WBAI. She is currently writing a biography of Viola Spolin, the creator of theater games. Highlights of her oral history include firsthand memories of Charles Mingus and the improvisational jazz scene that surrounded him in Greenwich Village; memories of the early years of the Loft Theatre Workshop; and early recollections of the Greenwich Village of her youth. 

Janet Coleman Oral History

Audio Clip from Deborah Glick Oral History

Deborah Glick Oral History

Romana (1931-2018) is the former owner and her son Andrew the current owner of Raffetto Pasta at 144 West Houston Street. A Greenwich Village and New York institution, Raffetto Pasta was founded by Romana's father-in-law in 1906.

The views expressed by the contributor(s) are solely those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or endorsement of our organization.

Andrew & Romana Raffetto Oral History

Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urban planner, author, and activist. Jacobs discusses various preservation battles in which she participated while living in Greenwich Village, including the fight to prevent Robert Moses from expanding a roadway through Washington Square Park, the effort in the early 1960s to challenge the City’s proposed urban renewal plan for the West Village, and her role in the battle against the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway.

The views expressed by the contributor(s) are solely those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or endorsement of our organization.

Jane Jacobs Highlight Clip

Dixon Bain served as the project manager for planning and construction of Westbeth Artist’s Residence in the West Village from 1967 to 1971.

The views expressed by the contributor(s) are solely those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or endorsement of our organization.

Dixon Bain Highlight Clip

Paula DeLuccia Poons (b. 1953) and her husband Larry Poons have lived at 827-831 Broadway since 1977. Both are artists, following a long tradition of artists who have taken refuge in the buildings over the last half century. In this recording, Paula talks about other occupants of the buildings including Willem de Kooning, MoMa Director William Rubin, and Cyndi Lauper. She also discusses the major changes to the neighborhood over the past 40 years as well as the recent battle to preserve these buildings which were slated for demolition until Village Preservation was able to successfully advocate for their landmark designation.

The views expressed by the contributor(s) are solely those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or endorsement of our organization.

Paula Poons Highlight Clip

Paula Poons Oral History

Puppeteer Ralph Lee (b. 1935, d. 2023) lived at Westbeth beginning in 1970 and was known as the “Father” of the famous Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.

The views expressed by the contributor(s) are solely those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or endorsement of our organization.

Ralph Lee Highlight Clip

Mimi Sheraton (February 10, 1926–April 6, 2023) was a food critic and food writer who had lived in the Village since 1945. In 1975 she was hired as the first female restaurant critic at The New York Times. Sheraton went on to work for a variety of magazines, including Time, Condé Nast Traveler, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue, and had lectured at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration as well as the Culinary Institute of America. This oral history includes Sheraton’s descriptions of the neighborhood and her reflections on the many changes that have occurred since the 1940s, her own trailblazing career, and some of the prominent figures and businesses of Greenwich Village with whom she became acquainted over the years.

The views expressed by the contributor(s) are solely those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or endorsement of our organization.

Mimi Sheraton Oral History

The area south of Union Square, where Greenwich Village meets the East Village, is a unique and dramatic confluence of history and heterodoxy; commerce and culture; art, architecture, and activism. It’s where great leaps forward in social movements, literature, music, and industry took place, in buildings displaying a smorgasbord of 19th and early 20th century styles. In this episode, we will hear and learn about our online resources about the area, and learn more about record producer John Hammond and the Columbia Recording Studio(55 Fifth Avenue), jazz great Randy Weston (204 East 13th Street) and noted jazz venue Bradley's (70 University Place). Explore our South of Union Square Map and Tours mentioned in the podcast: https://www.villagepreservation.org/resources/southofunionsquaremap/

Music Tour: South of Union Square

For more than a quarter century, Robert Mason operated RPM studios from his live/work loft on 12th Street south of Union Square, one of the first boutique recording studios in the city during a golden age of music and recording here.  Some of the greatest rock, hip hop, disco, jazz, and R&B artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries recorded with Rob, who began his career in music as one of the first post-genre contemporary classical electronic composers. Rob became interested in music and composition watching live performances in the clubs of Greenwich Village when he was a child in the 1950s and ‘60s. He studied at Mannes School of Music, Columbia- Princeton Electronic Music Center, the Oberlin Conservatory, and Intermedia Department of New York University. Mason converted many industrial spaces to accommodate synthesizers and serve as rehearsal spaces for electronic composers. In this interview, Mason reflects on his growth as a musician and composer, shares stories of operating RPM studios, and outlines new projects with younger generations of post-genre contemporary classical electronic composers.

The views expressed by the contributor(s) are solely those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or endorsement of our organization.

Village Preservation --Rob Mason Oral History

VillagePreservation.org 
Village Preservation was founded in 1980 as the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation to preserve the architectural heritage and cultural history of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. Village Preservation is a leader in protecting the sense of place and human scale that define the Village’s unique community.

Our programs include: educational outreach in the form of public lectures, tours, exhibitions, and publications; a school program that teaches children about Greenwich Village history and architecture; leadership on expanding landmark and zoning protections in our neighborhoods and fighting inappropriate development; preservation projects that promote an understanding of the Village's historic importance, such as the Greenwich Village Preservation Archive, our Historic Image Archive, our Oral History Project, and our Historic Plaques Program; small business promotion, through our Business of the Month program; recognition of the community leaders, institutions, businesses, and additions to our streetscapes which add to the special quality of our neighborhoods through our Annual Village Awards; and our Continuing Education program, which teaches real estate professionals about the value of historic preservation.

Village Preservation (GVSHP) has successfully advocated for the landmark designation of more than 1,250 buildings in our neighborhoods, and has helped secure zoning protections for nearly 100 blocks. Each day GVSHP monitors more than 6,500 building lots in our neighborhood for demolition, alteration, or new construction permits, so the organization can notify the public and respond if necessary. And each day Village Preservation also monitors the more than 3,000 landmarked properties in our neighborhood for applications for changes which must go through a public review and approval process, to also notify the public and respond as needed. GVSHP also reports and advocates for appropriate resolution of landmarks and zoning violations in our neighborhood, to help protect the special built environment and character.

In the spring, Village Preservation holds an Annual Village House Tour and reception, both to raise funds to support our work and to highlight and celebrate the incredible irreplaceable architecture of our neighborhoods.

Village Preservation is a 501(c)(3) organization.

Village Preservation

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