Winter Programs from GVSHP
John Sloan’s Greenwich Village
A lecture with John Loughery
Wednesday, January 23
Jefferson Market Library
425 Avenue of the Americas
6:30-8:00 p.m.
Free. Reservations required.
One of the most celebrated American realist painters of the early 20th century, John Sloan captured the character and pace of Greenwich Village in a way few artists were able to match. In this illustrated lecture at the Jefferson Market Library (one of Sloan’s favorite Village subjects), teacher and biographer John Loughery examines Sloan’s diverse representations of the East, West, and South Villages. Placing Sloan’s work in the context of early 20th-century American urban painting, Mr. Loughery will also explore how underlying themes of romance and myth permeated Sloan’s work as well as that of other New York City painters.
The Great Urban Paradigm Shift:
Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs, and West Village Houses
A lecture by Warren Shaw
Tuesday, February 12
Westbeth Community Room
55 Bethune Street
6:30-8:00 p.m.
Free. Reservations required.
The development of the West Village Houses has typified many of the diverse challenges facing preservationists in an ever-expanding city like New York. Warren Shaw, Asst. Corporation Counsel in the Real Estate Litigation Division of the New York City Law Department will examine the creation of the West Village Houses as an outgrowth of the epochal battle between Robert Moses (the Urban Renewal Czar) and Jane Jacobs (the champion of traditional urbanism). Now a partially privatized co-op, the West Village Houses is an exceptional symbol of a community both shaped and challenged by evolving attitudes toward city planning, conservation, and Urban Renewal.
Intimate Portraits:
African Americans in the Antebellum South Village
A lecture with Gunja SenGupta
Wednesday, February 27
Jefferson Market Library
425 Avenue of the Americas
6:30-8:00 p.m.
Free. Reservations required.
Celebrate African-American History Month with the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation as we explore the Village’s often forgotten African-American heritage. Professor Gunja SenGupta of Brooklyn College will trace the history of black Greenwich Village from slavery to tentative freedom in 1827 and beyond. Drawing on rich visual and archival resources, Prof. SenGupta will offer us insight into the lives of African Americans who lived in the Village in the decades before the Civil War and will examine who they were, where they came from, how they interacted with their immigrant and migrant neighbors, and how their community adapted to an environment of heightened racism and economic instability.