East Village

A Tour of East 11th Street

Posted on by danimarie19

Sit back and enjoy a brief tour of (only a small) section of the East Village. Please keep all hands and feet secured within the trolley at all times.

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St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery, an Episcopal Church on East 11th street. Outside there is a labyrinth designed to welcome people, help them find a starting point and navigate with the help of others. 

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Down on the pavement, East 11th. 

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The GVSHP headquarters. 

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All Saints Ukrainian Church: From Welsh Congregational Church to a Hungarian Congregation to an off-Broadway playhouse that once saw a young James Earl Jones grace its stage in the 60’s, it became an orthodox church in 1971. 

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East 11th Street isn’t complete without a snap of Webster, and its performers of the night. 

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Finishing up this micro-tour: The juxtaposition of faith and parking restrictions. The historic Grace church was designated in 1966, and is best known for its French Gothic Revival architecture. 

This concludes our brief tour. Please exit to your left and we hope to see you again soon!

Photos: ©Danielle Elmers

The Ottendorfer Library

Posted on by danimarie19

With just two floors, the top designated for children and the bottom for everyone else, the Ottendorfer Library on 2nd Avenue is small branch compared to the main New York Public Library. But what it lacks in size, it makes up for in history and community.

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The library’s Landmark Designation 

Located between St. Marks Place and East 9th Street, the library opened in 1884 as New York City’s first public library. The building, a mix of Queen Anne and Neo-Italian Renaissance style with a terracotta putti exterior facade, was designed by William Schikel, a German-born architect. The building, however, was a gift from Oswald Ottendorfer to the neighborhood, which was known as Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany. Ottendorfer, who was the owner of the New- Yorker Staats-Zeitung newspaper, wanted the library to be bilingual in German and English to help the 150,000 people of German descent to assimilate into American culture. Of the original 8,000 books, half where in English and the other half where in German.

An inside look

Nowadays, the library still remains a multi-lingual library, offering books in many languages, such as Spanish and Polish. The library also offers help with research, teaches others how to navigate through information, and offers immigration aides.

Any afternoon, one can walk into the Ottendorfer Library and find people of all ages sitting at one of the round tables, reading a book, perusing a newspaper or doing work. Others mingle around the shelves, looking for something that catches their eyes. Others go straight to the reserves shelf, finding the book that they reserved for themselves using the last four digits of their library card. The staff buzz around, making sure everyone who needs help gets help, or busily check in and out books from local library patrons.

This narrow building grows as you walk through the front door.

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*All Photos: ©Danielle Elmers

Three Organizations, One Mission

Posted on by danimarie19

©In NYC, there are three organizations that stand out when it comes to the preservation of Downtown. The Landmarks Preservation Commission, the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation, and the New York Landmarks Conservancy all work together to ensure that the historical architecture and the culture behind each landmark is protected from big real estate and the need for more skyscrapers.

 

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From aiding with landmark applications to giving advice on architectural renovations, these three organizations are involved.

Check out their websites:

GVSHP (Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation)

LPC (Landmark Preservation Commission)

NYLC (New York Landmarks Conservancy)

*Photo: ©Danielle Elmers

The Puck Building

Posted on by danimarie19

The Puck Building, located on Lafayette Street in Soho, is now home to expensive penthouses and the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, as well as the Sociology department from NYU. With a golden Puck, the mischievous character from Shakespeare’s plays,  watching pedestrians walking by the front doors and a luxurious lobby with a cast-iron fireplace imported from Europe and stain-glassed Puck by the elevators, the Puck building exudes elegance.

However, before it became home to New York City’s elite, the Puck building was home to the Puck Magazine, a satirical publication run by Austrian immigrant, Joseph Keppler. Keppler brought the magazine to fame, poking fun at public officials and helping Grover Cleveland win the Presidency against James G. Blaine, by throwing their influence behind Cleveland. Puck Magazine consisted of political cartoons, with Keppler taking the best cartoonists from imitator magazines. When Keppler died in 1894, his son, Udo, took over the publication, but due to changes in media, Puck would go under. William Randolph Hearst would come to acquire the magazine, quite ironic considering the magazine mocked him constantly.

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“What Fools These Mortals Be” 

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Spy Magazine, another political satire magazine, would have a short life at the Puck Building.

Now, the Puck Building stands a combination of offices and penthouses, even after exchange with the Landmark Preservation Commission in 2011.

For a more detailed history of the building, please look here.

Photos: ©Danielle Elmers