The Many Lives of Greenwich Village: Collective Memory and Preservation

Join us for a series of programs traversing four neighborhoods inhabited by Renee and Chaim Gross throughout the 20th century. Organized by the Foundation’s NYU Public Humanities Initiative Pre-Doctoral Fellow Yana Lysenko, this series features both virtual and in-person events.

Speakers Andrew Berman, Michele Herman, and John Sorensen will conclude the Memories of Manhattan series with an in-person panel discussion about Greenwich Village on Tuesday, May 28 at 6 pm EDT.

Organized by the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation in collaboration with Village Preservation, this program will discuss Greenwich Village as a space of collective memory and an important site of preservation in New York City. Greenwich Village built a reputation for eccentricity, experimentation, and artistic creativity in the 1960s and ‘70s as the center of bohemian and countercultural movements. Although the neighborhood has seen dramatic changes over the decades, the memory of creative freedom and acceptance continues to mark Greenwich Village today.

Panelists, composed of neighborhood preservationists and local residents, will discuss why the Village remains such a renowned and beloved space for the public, and consider ways to preserve this neighborhood’s memory in an ever-changing New York City.

Andrew Berman has served as Executive Director of Village Preservation, a community-based 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to preserving the special architectural and cultural heritage of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo, since 2002. In that time he has led the organization in successful efforts to secure landmark designation of over 1,250 buildings, including groundbreaking designations honoring LGBTQ+, African-American, immigrant, and artistic and countercultural history. An architectural historian, he has also worked extensively in the fields of tenant and housing advocacy as well as cultural preservation particularly for underrepresented groups.

Michele Herman’s first novel, Save the Village, was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Prize. She’s also the author of two poetry chapbooks: Victory Boulevard and Just Another Jack: The Private Lives of Nursery Rhymes. Her work has appeared in recent issues of Carve, Ploughshares, The Hudson Review, and The Sun. She's a devoted teacher at The Writers Studio, a developmental editor, award-winning translator of Jacques Brel songs, columnist at The Village Sun and LitHub, and is approaching her 40th year as a Villager.

John Sorensen has lived in and around Greenwich Village since 1986. His books include A Sister’s Memories and The Mystical Filmmaker with Peter Whitehead. Sorensen was the assistant director of Jay Presson Allen’s Tony-winning play, Tru. He has produced, written, and directed a wide range of arts and cultural programs including for the U.S. Department of State, Public Television, and the Chicago Humanities Festival. He is currently working on a book telling the story of the Village’s fabled Hotel Earle—now the Washington Square Hotel.

Yana Lysenko is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature and Russian & Slavic Studies at New York University. Her dissertation focuses on the concept of urban identity in twentieth and twenty-first century Ukrainian literature, cinema and media. She is the 2023-24 NYU Public Humanities Initiative Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation.

Memories of Manhattan is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Image above: Chaim Gross, Snapshot of LaGuardia Place looking north, October 1970. From the archives of the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation.