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SELECTED PUBLISHED WRITING AND RECORDED LECTURES
We know history is everywhere, and we aim to share it as widely as possible. We're so happy to be linked into a network of local media outlets including The Gotham Center for New York City History, Jstor Daily and 6sqft, which do the great work of finding, reporting and sharing vital New York Stories. Some of our lectures are also recorded by partner organizations. You can find published pieces and recorded public lectures below!
Selected Recorded Events
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Nonprofits & Activism
Greenwich Village, GVSHP, Marcel Duchamp, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Isadora Duncan, Mabel Dodge, Lucie Levine, New York, Hudson Park Library, Shake the World, Eugene O'Neill, NYC History, America's Latin Quarter
Selected Recorded Events
Ada Louise Huxtable's New York
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March 14, 2021 marks what would be Ada Louise Huxtable’s 100th birthday. Huxtable (1921-2013), a native New Yorker, was a pioneer in architectural criticism, and a champion of livable cities. As the first full-time architecture critic at a major American Newspaper (The New York Times created the position specifically for her in 1963), she won the first Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism in 1970, and helped redefine architecture in the public consciousness as “a very real and important art [because] it affects us all so directly.” Her writing on architecture, urban design, and planning helped bring those topics into the popular consciousness and encouraged New Yorkers to see the buildings around them as part of their lives. She championed “humanity of scale,” and buildings that were “integrated into life and use,” writing “what counts more than style is whether architecture improves our experience of the built world; whether it makes us wonder why we never noticed places in quite this way before.” Huxtable helped us do exactly that. Join us on this virtual tour of her New York from March 17, 2021. We will learn about her life, see buildings she praised and those she decried, and consider her legacy as a writer, an urbanist, and a champion of the collective work of city-making. Lucie Levine is a licensed, star-rated New York City tour guide, passionate history nerd, and founder of Archive on Parade, which takes New York City’s fascinating history out of the archives and into community events built on a potent combination of rigorous research and fabulous storytelling flair. Co-hosted by the Historic Districts Council, Friends of the Upper East Side, Landmark West! and the New York Preservation Archive Project as part of Village Preservation’s Women’s History Month programming.Nonprofits & Activism
Women’s Equality Day in the Village, at the Vanguard
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The Pioneering Village Women who Fought for the Vote, and Those Who Continued the Fight for Social and Political Justice In honor of Women’s Equality Day and the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, join historian Lucie Levine for a virtual tour celebrating the women of Greenwich Village who fought for the vote, and those who continued on to advocate for greater women’s equality in American life. Village women were instrumental in both the fight for suffrage and the ongoing struggle for civil rights. Their advocacy and tenacity intersected with labor politics, reproductive justice, anti-militarism, the Black Arts Movement, LGBT+ liberation, criminal justice reform, and a host of other areas where women emerged as leaders. This Women’s Equality Day is a meaningful moment to consider their legacy, as the nation takes to the streets to demand justice and equality. Lucie Levine is a licensed, star-rated New York City tour guide, passionate history nerd, and founder of Archive on Parade, which takes New York City’s fascinating history out of the archives and into community events built on a potent combination of rigorous research and fabulous storytelling flair.Nonprofits & Activism
Back to School
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Now that NYC students are returning to the classroom, FRIENDS is going Back to School on the Upper East Side, offering a look at the educational institutions that serve our neighborhood, and shape our city. On this virtual tour led by Historian Lucie Levine, we’ll discover the role that educational institutions have played in the social and architectural history of the neighborhood, from the nation’s first free women’s institution of higher education, to an elite private school founded on the tenets of Socialism, to an educational complex that ignited a fierce debate with the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, and others which engage in adaptive reuse, stewarding the history of our neighborhood and helping to build its future.Nonprofits & Activism
Immigration in Greenwich Village, 100 Years Since the Emergency Quota Act
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Early echoes of today’s debates around who should be allowed to enter the United States can be heard in the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, a century-old piece of legislation that established the nation’s first quota system and drastically reduced the number of immigrants legally allowed to enter the United States. Perhaps no city was more affected than New York, where the flow of immigrants slowed to a trickle (replaced in part by migrants from the South and Puerto Rico), until the act was finally reformed in 1965. Since then, New York has again become a center for international immigration, and immigrant New Yorkers have profoundly shaped our neighborhoods. In this Jane’s Walk led by historian and tour guide Lucie Levine, we looked back at the immigrant history of Greenwich Village, celebrating the myriad communities that have called our neighborhood home, and considering how those communities, and the legislation that affected their access to this country, shaped the social and architectural history of Greenwich Village.Nonprofits & Activism
Shake the World: The West Village and the Dawn of "America's Latin Quarter" | February 13, 2019
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Imagine you are at a party with the journalist Walter Lippmann, the dancer Isadora Duncan, and the playwright Eugene O'Neill. Two things are probably true: you are at Mabel Dodge's Wednesday Night Salon, and Marcel Duchamp is swinging from the chandelier. Dodge began her salon in 1912, when the Village entered its "Lyric Period," and was dubbed "America's Latin Quarter." At this talk, New York historian Lucie Levine will bring us into the story of the Village on the eve of the First World War. We'll learn how the neighborhood transformed from a prestigious enclave to an artists' paradise, and delve into the area's original Bohemian haunts. Lucie Levine is a licensed, star-rated New York City tour guide, passionate history nerd, and founder of Archive on Parade, which takes New York City's fascinating history out of the archives and into community events built on a potent combination of rigorous research and fabulous storytelling flair.Nonprofits & Activism
GVSHP, Shake the World, America's Latin Quarter, NYC History, New York, Greenwich Village, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Marcel Duchamp, Eugene O'Neill, Isadora Duncan, Mabel Dodge, Lucie Levine, Hudson Park Library
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