The Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year is one of the most celebrated holidays in the world. February 5th, 2019 ushers in the Year of the Pig, the last year in the 12-year Chinese zodiac calendar-cycle. While most of the New Year’s festivities take place in Chinatown, we thought we would highlight some of our favorite Chinese cultural organizations and events in the Village and surrounding areas.
The East Village is probably not the first neighborhood that comes to mind when most New Yorkers think about African American history. But this incredibly rich, multi-layered neighborhood was home to some remarkably consequential events, places, and figures in African-American history.
To help explore just some of them, we have created a new African American History Guided Tour on our recently-launched East Village Building Blocks site — see it here.
Here are just a few of the highlights:
Sadly, another local institution has announced they are closing. After 36 years in business, St. Mark’s Comics will close at the end of February. Although St. Mark’s is not dead, it is easy to feel like New York City is losing more of its character and charm when hearing such news. But all hope is not lost — there could be some good news on the horizon soon for small businesses.
If you’re not familiar with the Urban Archive App, now is a great time to delve into it. GVSHP has partnered with Urban Archive extensively, and we’re adding one more way, which is centered around YOU. So much of what makes the Village special are your stories. And now, Urban Archive is creating an open collection, starting February 1st, to collect your stories. They’re calling it “My Archive,” and GVSHP is partnering with many others to bring this special project to our community. So, it’s time to get your stories ready!
Archival images from the Urban Archive’s “My Archive” page, including images from GVSHP’s Historic Image Archive
In a recent post, we discussed the many resources that we used to research the over 2,200 properties that are featured in our online tool, East Village Building Blocks. In that post, we looked at how we figured out the history of two buildings which are easily discernible as 19th-century structures. Today we thought we would look at a couple of buildings which are not what they seem, so you can see that figuring out the history of structures in the East Village is not always so easy.
Today we welcome aboard Laura Fleischmann, who will be taking over our Program and Administrative Associate position. She’s excited to continue her work with the GVSHP team, assisting with member services, public programs, special projects, and many things in between.
Laura
They Dwelt on West 9th Street: William J. Glackens is the 6th in a series.
William Glackens, “Washington Square Park” (1908)
“Art, like humanity, every time has an ancestry.” — William Glackens
William Glackens (1870-1938) was an American Painter whose work is associated with the Ashcan School. He began his career as a newspaper and magazine illustrator and his roots in that field lead him to an aesthetic as a painter that was keenly observational in nature and often focused on his immediate surroundings — the Greenwich Village/Washington Square neighborhood.
Saul Leiter, American painter and photographer, was part of what was known as the New York school of photography of the 1940s and 50s, and resided on East 10th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues for 61 years until his death in 2013. His photographs from the 1950s experimented with color, unlike those of his contemporaries, and many were street scenes of his East Village neighborhood. Also unlike many of his contemporaries, the significance of this work has only recently come to be recognized and he is now duly credited as an early pioneer of color photography.
Saul Leiter at 111 East 10th Street, c. 1950 ©Saul Leiter Foundation/Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery
On these chilly late-January days, a little virtual trip through some lush, breezy gardens might just help to lift the spirits. With our recent launch of East Village Building Blocks, not only can you explore every building between 14th Street and East Houston, 4th Avenue and the East River, but you can also delve into the community gardens and other green spaces within this area.
Through tags or search, explore the East Village through countless different lenses.
British-born architect Richard Upjohn was born on January 22, 1802 in Sheffield, England. He moved to the United States in 1829, and in 1835 designed his first of many churches throughout the United States. He would go on to design over 50 churches in the Gothic Revival and Italianate styles across the country throughout his almost forty-year career. Most were in the northeast, from Pennsylvania to Maine, but some were as far as Maryland and Wisconsin. He also designed several mansions, courthouses, and schools, many of which still exist. Perhaps his most prominent project is Trinity Church on lower Broadway, designed in 1846 and credited with kicking off the Gothic Revival style in the United States, and one of seven Trinity Episcopalian churches he would design over his career. Locally, he designed the Church of the Ascension on 5th Avenue and West 10th Street.
Church of the Ascension on 5th Avenue West 10th Street, constructed 1840-1841
