On October 17, 2017 the Landmarks Preservation Commissions (LPC) held a hearing to consider landmarking 827-831 Broadway, the threatened 1866 lofts once home to Willem de Kooning. Just two weeks later, the LPC voted to landmark them, culminating a year…
Even though the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) just calendared, or began the formal process of consideration for, landmark designations of seven buildings in the area affected by the recent Tech Hub upzoning — 817, 826, 830, 832, 836, 840,…
GVSHP has been conducting and sharing oral histories since the mid-1990s. As we look back on two powerhouse oral histories, we’re considering the importance of such documents as “the first kind of history,” as “part of the struggle of memory…
Born Thomas Lanier Williams, III, on March 26th, 1911, playwright Tennessee Williams was as much a New Yorker as anyone, really. While his place of birth was really Columbus, Mississippi, he was an itinerant traveler of the world, but spent…
I’ll take Manhattan! If you had to draw a picture of a New York playwright, you would probably draw someone like John Guare. Guare was born on February 5, 1938. A New Yorker’s New Yorker, he has lived in Greenwich…
On this day in 1888, Eugene Gladstone O’Neill was born, and the course of American theater would change forever. O’Neill became the first American dramatist to regard the stage as a literary medium and he remains the only U.S. playwright…
Clifford Odets, one of America’s greatest playwrights, passed away on this day in 1963 at the age of 57. Odets grew up in the Bronx but migrated downtown as soon as he could in order to be around the…
“Miss West, are you trying to show contempt for this court?” “On the contrary, your Honor,” Mae sweetly responded. “I was doin’ my best to conceal it.” Known for her easy, breezy banter, laden with double entendre, Mae West was…
