By Brian J. Pape, AIA Today’s residents of the West Village owe a lot to the activists who lived here before us. They say “Hindsight is 20/20,” but we still speculate on “what might have been.” Google the still active committee, WestVillageCommittee.html, and you’ll find a little history and their current activities, but you have
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Notes From Away: Maine History Lesson
By Tom Lamia As the State of Maine heads into its annual state of hibernation, I leave you with a few odd facts (culled from the internet, an unreliable source). For example, did you know… That well into our nation’s existence, Maine was an orphan: Neither its borders nor its sovereignty were established; Those contesting
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Bell Labs’ Second-Best-Kept Secret
By Catherine Revland Part Two of a series, You Must Remember This, about World War II and its relevance to our times “How do you manage genius? You don’t.” —Mervin Kelly, director of Bell Research Labs In the industrial Monopoly game of the 1940s, Bell Labs and Western Electric were Boardwalk and Park Place, an
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A Colonial American Romance
The True Saga of an American Beauty Who Captured a Baron’s Heart A destitute young lady is swept off her feet by a swashbuckling Baron…the stuff that fairytales and Hollywood movies are made of. But this timeless tale of Lady Frankland (Agnes Surriage) and Sir Harry Frankland is made up of more than fairydust and
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Structural Report and Eye-Witnesses Conclude- WTC Building 7 Didn’t Collapse from Fire
By Brian J. Pape, AIA The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) recently released an independent report on the destruction of 47-story World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7), which collapsed into its own ‘footprint’, falling more than 100 feet at the rate of gravity (‘free-fall’= no obstruction to the pull of gravity) for a third
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Planes or Bombs? 9/11 Revisited
By Barry Benepe In May 2018, the New York Times published a report by Elizabeth Williamson in which she told readers how Alex Jones, “an online conspiracy theorist,” claimed that the Sandy Hook gun massacre of 20 first graders and six adults never happened but was a “hoax” invented by “government gun-grabbers.” As a founder
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Finest Hour
By Catherine Revland The first article of a four-part series, You Must Remember This, about World War II and its relevance to our times “The rape of Poland by both Hitler and Stalin meant that the two greatest totalitarian states in the world were in partnership against us. And what were we? A group of
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Then&Now: Washington & Christopher High Line
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, Architecture Editor Then: This 1940 Municipal Tax photo of 634-648 Washington Street views its intersection with Christopher Street, looking southwest. The New York Central Railroad built the St. John freight terminal and this viaduct from 1930-34, succumbing to pressure condemning the numerous pedestrian accidents while the 13-mile surface track, built in
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Then&Now: Seventh Avenue South/200 West 11th Street
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, Architecture Editor THEN: This site, addressed 192 Seventh Avenue South in the 1940 tax photo, was on a forlorn thoroughfare because the Seventh Avenue extension below West 12th Street cut a swath through the established neighborhood, leaving odd walls, yards and slivers of lot sizes, like this one just south
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Notes From Away: Deja Vu
By Tom Lamia Margaret Chase Smith was a US Senator from Maine whose life and political career offer proof of the power of independent thinking and the courage to act on it, even in the face of demands for loyalty to party doctrine. Just a few words of background should be enough to make the
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View From My 91st Floor Window
By Karin Batten In 2001 I had just moved to the Westbeth artist housing community, in the West Village, two months prior to the 9/11 attack. On the day of 9/11 the primaries for mayor were going on. I had just changed my district in New York City so I was re-registering to vote. I
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Rebirth of a Jewel: Eero Saarinen’s Landmark TWA Terminal Has Been Restored as the Centerpiece of a New Hotel at JFK
By Eric Uhlfelder It’s not easy finding your way in. The AirTrain appears to let you off close. But it’s a long walk before you can figure your way into the Terminal’s iconic access tubes. Parking doesn’t get you any closer, unless you’re willing to walk down an inbound car ramp and cross access roads.
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Lizabeth Scott, The “Hubba Hubba” Girl
By Robert Heide August 6th is the date to mark down on your calendar to go to the air-conditioned Film Forum on Houston Street to see the one-day-only double bill in the Burt Lancaster Film Festival, which runs through August 15th, of Desert Fury and I Walk Alone, both starring my own favorite movie star
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The Truth of the American Revolution
By James Henry The American Revolution was fought over freedom…or was it? Tax-wise, the British colonists in North America had it pretty easy. That’s why they came to the New World—to get away from the crowded over-taxed opportunity-starved Old World. The colonists had the opportunity to own land, enjoy the fruits of their labors and
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The Legendary Caffe Cino Designated a NYC Landmark
By Robert Heide In 2015 the Stonewall Inn was granted landmark status by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. On June 18th of this year, six historic sites important to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people movement were also designated historic landmarks. They are the LGBT Community Center on 13th Street, the former
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West Villagers Can Walk to the Sea
By Deborah Clearman Once again, Pier 40 is in the news, as the State Assembly has amended the Hudson River Park Act to allow office development on the pier. However, with some stipulations. Remarkably, the legislation calls for a boathouse, at least the size of the current boathouse, providing small-scale boating and water access on
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The Psychology of Perpetrators, Bystanders, and Victims of the Holocaust
By Leila Amin Attempting to explain human behavior during an event as unfathomable as the Holocaust can seem like an impossible task. However, although a nation of bystanders was crucial to its implementation, so too was an army of active perpetrators, each of whom had to undergo a transformation of their own in order to
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50th Anniversary of Stonewall: Remembered through Dramatic Work
By Celeste Kaufman Phoenix Lindsey-Hall, a ceramicist, photographer, and mixed media artist, has a story to tell; and what better time to share her story than during the celebration of the Stonewall uprising? She explores themes related to queer communities, and the violence perpetrated against them. Originally focusing on photography, earning degrees from Parsons School
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Then&Now: 501 Hudson and Christopher Street
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Then: This March 1933 photo (matching an earlier 1927 photo) of the once four-story-corner-building-next-to-a-3-story-mixed-use rowhouse, describes both as 501 Hudson Street and 131 Christopher Street. Even the GVHD Designation Report of 4/29/69 describes these addresses as one lot, though clearly they are not one building. The 12 over 12
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A Fifties State of Mind
By Barbara Riddle John Cassavetes, the Stonewall Inn and the end of the Cold War are all connected in my mind by two words. Two words that describe what we badly need during these politically insane times: resistance and hope; hope and resistance. My thoughts were triggered during a book reading/signing I recently attended, a
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Stonewall Uprising, 1969: A 50-Year Celebration
By Robert Heide and John Gilman Yes, we were there the night of June 28th, 1969, and all the rest of those famous nights whose impact has been felt around the world. This year’s annual Gay Pride Parade will celebrate the 50th anniversary of that date, and is expected to be attended by a record
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A View from the Kitchen
By Isa Covo Here is what happened when women took matters into their own hands. Recently I read an article about some Palestinian women and children from Jubbet ad-Dib, a Bedouin village, who one day, and without warning, stormed the offices of their district council and demanded clean water and electricity for their village. They
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Notes From Away: The Past Is History
By Tom Lamia “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” is from William Faulkner and often used to show literary cool when saying there is nothing new under the sun. I am going to use it here to make a different point—that in older societies the past is revered and relevant. One such older society is
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A Tribute to Ralph David Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr.
By Michael Duane Johnson Seven months ago, George Capsis, Publisher of the WestView News, in the Village of Manhattan, offered me an opportunity to write a piece for his paper about myself. I could not find the words or spirit until now to do so. I have no idea who I really am. For the
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Five Milestones of Technology That Made Us What We Are Today
By Josef Eisinger© After musing in these pages about the evolution of life on Earth (WestView News, Feb. 2019) and about the rapid pace of technological innovations (WestView News, Jan. 2018), I propose to select in this article five technological landmarks that arguably had the greatest influence on human behavior in their wake. This is,
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9/11 Tiles for America
By Dusty Berke The 9/11 Tiles for America is the only grass-roots tribute to the tragic events of 9/11 that remains in the West Village on the corner where it first began. It was created by Lorrie Veassey, the owner of Our Name is Mud, a local paint-your-own pottery shop, as a way to brighten
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THEN AND NOW: The New School for Social Research Celebrates 100 Years!
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP For the first decade of its existence, beginning in 1919, the New School for Social Research and Alvin Saunders Johnson (1874-1971), a co-founder and leader of the institution from 1922 through 1945, operated out of six renovated brownstones on West 23rd Street. Johnson and others had been on the
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My Time at The New School—1958
By Les Plosia If The New School is anything like it used to be, count me a big fan. Then in my upper 20s, I would tool south in my MG convertible on the West Side Highway two evenings a week from my junior editing job at Prentice-Hall publishing house on the New Jersey side
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Greenwich Village: Reminiscence
By Harry Rissetto I grew up in Greenwich Village during the period between Robert Moses’ proposed freeway and John Lindsey’s plans for a tourist mecca. I recently spent parts of a year back there and tried to connect my memories and current impressions. The West Village during the ‘50s and ‘60s was mostly middle class
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Greenwich Village: What’s in the Name?
By Brian J. Pape, AIA Greenwich is a fairly common place name, a city in CT, a village in upper NY, NJ, RI, and of course, Greenwich England. Place-names typically have meanings that were significant to the settlers of a locality. When talking about place names, there is a specific term, toponymy, whereas “the etymology
