This plaque was placed on October 7, 2015

Located on 81 Horatio Street, this plaque marks the residence of influential American writer James Baldwin (1924-1987)

This plaque was dedicated November 7, 2018

Located at 55 Bethune, Westbeth Artist's Housing. This unique complex of buildings served as the home of Bell Telephone Labs where many technological innovations were developed or advanced, including radar, television, and video telephones. It re-opened in 1970 as Westbeth, an early example of large-scale adaptive reuse of an industrial building. The original Highline rail line ran parallel to Washington Street and through the Bethune Street building and its historic route is still carved through and visible in this landmark building.

This building's plaque was dedicated on October 29, 2020

The activist and writer Jane Jacobs was instrumental in protecting and preserving Greenwich Village in the face of post-war “urban renewal.” With her seminal text The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she changed the way we built, planned, and organized cities across the country and world, based upon lessons illustrated and learned in Greenwich Village.

The plaque was dedicated on July 23, 2013

Located at the Church of the Village at 201 West Thirteenth Street, this plaque commemorates the location where the first meeting of what would become PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) was held. This plaque was placed by GVSHP and P-FLAG. It is located in the Greenwich Village Historic District.

This plaque was dedicated on April 21, 2022

On April 21, 1966, members of the Mattachine Society, a pioneering gay rights organization, challenged a regulation that prohibited bars from serving LGBT people by staging a “Sip-In” at Julius’, a bar with a large gay clientele. With reporters and a photographer in tow, the activists announced they were homosexuals, asked to be served, and were refused. This early gay rights action and the attendant publicity helped to raise awareness of widespread anti-LGBT discrimination and harassment. Julius’ was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.

This plaque was dedicated May 15, 2019

Alex Haley (1921-1992) lived and maintained a writing studio in Greenwich Village. Beginning in 1963 he conducted fifty in-depth interviews with Malcolm X here for his first book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Published shortly after his assassination in 1965, that book transformed the public’s view of Malcolm X, and is widely considered one of the top works of non-fiction. Haley’s next project was the 1976 book Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which has been published in over 30 languages and for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1977. Haley began writing in the Coast Guard, where he served for 20 years.

This plaque was dedicated October 16, 2017

The first African American woman to write a play performed on Broadway, Lorraine Vivian Hansberry bought this Greenwich Village home in 1960. Already a Villager at the time, Hansberry was a staple of the progressive, creative scene in the neighborhood. Best known for her play A Raisin in the Sun about living under racial segregation in Chicago, she was a New School graduate, a political organizer, a furtive participant in the LGBT rights struggle, and a social justice advocate. Her political engagement drew the attention and surveillance of the FBI. Although she died young, her creative spirit and activism continued to inspire her fellow Villagers and artistic peers; Hansberry even inspired Nina Simone's song “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.”

This plaque was dedicated October 7, 2019

The American muralist and decorative artist James Wall Finn was born in New York. A graduate of École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, he returned to New York and moved to 16 West 9th Street, where he lived for many years. Finn was a muralist for J.J. Astor, Payne Whitney, and Tiffany Studios, and painted large, spectacular interiors to grace the Hotel Knickerbocker, the Morgan Library, and the New York Public Library, which underwent a 2016 restoration of Finn’s ceiling mural of a sky with rosy clouds. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in 1913. At the dedication of this plaque, Village Preservation was joined by Jennifer Tonkovich, Eugene, and Clare Thaw Curator at The Morgan Library & Museum.

This plaque was dedicated June 18, 2015

Located on 66 Fifth Avenue, this plaque commemorates the location where visionary choreographer Martha Graham (1894-1991) rehearsed and created groundbreaking new works in the 1930s and 40s. Known as “The Picasso of Dance,” Graham is credited with more or less creating modern dance.

This plaque was dedicated May 10, 2022

No. 70 Fifth Avenue, a 1912 Beaux Arts–style office building, served as headquarters of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, from 1914 to 1925, during the young organization’s early campaigns against lynching, employment discrimination, voting disenfranchisement, and defamatory representations in the media, including the film The Birth of a Nation. It also housed W.E.B. DuBois’ The Crisis magazine, the first African American magazine and voice of the civil rights movement for over a century, and launching pad for the Harlem Renaissance and writers Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Countee Cullen, among others. The building was also the early or original home of a stunning array of progressive, human rights, and civil liberties organizations, including the ACLU, the American Federation of Teachers, the League for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, the League for Industrial Democracy, the Women’s Peace Party, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and the Near East Foundation, which led the effort to prevent and respond to the Armenian Genocide. It was also home to the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, founded to fight government intervention in the film industry and now known as the National Board of Review. In 2021, after a campaign by Village Preservation to obtain landmark protections for 70 Fifth Avenue, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously to declare the building a NYC landmark.

This plaque was September 28, 2021

Anaïs Nin, a renowned author whose diaries, novels, short stories, essays, and volumes of erotica have influenced countless artists and activists, operated her personal press, Gemor Press, at 17 East 13th Street early in her career. There, she self-published some of her first works, putting careful thought into all aspects of the printing process, including the selection of typefaces, paper, and engravings. She regarded these decisions as an extension of her creative process and writing. The work published at Gemor Press helped launch Nin's career, connecting her to larger publishers and audiences. Join us virtually for the unveiling of the plaque on the building, which still stands today.

The plaque was dedicated November 8, 2021

Painter, printmaker, and sculptor Frank Stella lived and worked here from 1978 to 2005, in what was originally a horse auction mart for the city's elite, and then served as a women’s assembly-line training center during World War II. Known initially for his use of geometric patterns in the Minimalist style and later for his experiments with shaped canvases and three-dimensional constructions, Stella is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential artists of his generation.

This plaque was dedicated June 10, 2014

Located at 441 East Ninth Street, this plaque commemorates the residence of the noted poet and playwright Frank O’Hara (1926-1966).

This plaque was dedicated October 29, 2014.

Located at 105 Second Avenue, this plaque marks the site of the Fillmore East, a beloved concert hall where noted musicians such as the Allman Brothers, Sly, and the Family Stone, Led Zeppelin, Santana, Odetta, Van Morrison, Joan Baez, Neil Young, and Fats Domino performed. It is located in the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District.

This plaque was dedicated May 30, 2012

Located on 50 East First Street, this plaque marks the location of the Justus Schwab (1847 - 1900) Saloon. Schwab was a German immigrant and a radical labor organizer whose saloon was frequented by such noted figures as Emma Goldman and Ambrose Pierce. It was a magnet for political and social organizing on the Lower East Side.

In the 1960s, this 1845 former rooming house became a laboratory for artistic, literary, and political currents, including growing activism among African-American artists. Writers LeRoi and Hettie Jones, their Yugen magazine and Totem Press, musician Archie Shepp and painter Elizabeth Murray all had homes here. The vacant building was transformed into a vital hub of cultural life, attracting leading figures including those from the Beats and the world of jazz. It was also the childhood home of a second generation of East Village artists and thinkers.

Located on 57 Great Jones Street, this plaque commemorates the site of the home and studio of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Basquiat forged an innovative and inspiring language that melded his urban American experience with his African-Caribbean heritage. It is located in the NoHo Historic District Extension.

This plaque was dedicated May 14, 2018

In 1857, the first female physician in America, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, established the first hospital for women, staffed by women, and run by women, called The New York Infirmary for Women and Children. It was located in the house still standing at 58 Bleecker Street (at Crosby Street), which was originally numbered 64 Bleecker Street. Built in 1822-1823, the Federal-style house was erected for James Roosevelt, the great grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who lived there until his death just ten years before Blackwell embarked on her groundbreaking effort. Blackwell's hospital opened on May 12, 1857, the 37th birthday of Florence Nightingale, whom Blackwell had befriended earlier in her career. The hospital was open seven days a week and provided medical care for needy women and children free of charge.

This plaque was dedicated October 4, 2016

Located at 526 LaGuardia Place, this plaque commemorates the house where renowned sculptor Chaim Gross lived and worked from 1963 until his death in 1991.

This plaque was July 29, 2013

Located on 93 MacDougal Street, this plaque marks the site of the San Remo Café, frequented by many famous artists and writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Miles Davis, Frank O’Hara, Judith Malina, Jackson Pollock, James Baldwin, and Gore Vidal. It is located in the South Village Historic District.