East Village Building Blocks
Mapping the public histories of every building in the East Village
Buscada created “East Village Building Blocks” in collaboration with the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation as a way to give public access to GVSHP’s rich architectural research on every one of the more than 2000 buildings in New York’s East Village. The project allows members of the public to address this rich information building-by-building and block-by-block, but also provides entry points to these local histories and personal stories through a growing series of curated guided tours, which Buscada and GVSHP have solicited from local organizations, cultural workers, historians, and long-time residents.
One of more than 2000 buildings on East Village Building Blocks.
Each guided tour on Building Blocks invites you to see a collection of East Village buildings in a new way. Each is idiosyncratic and is curated by an expert on one of the many facets of the East Village.
Exploring the neighborhood through these perspectives, the project as a whole asks many questions: What does a building mean to someone who lives there? What does it mean to a person who lives on the block? In the neighborhood? In the city? What might that building mean for our city and collective cultural history?
In addition to providing unprecedented access to a rich archive of architectural and cultural information, the site also makes space for community-contributed personal and political histories to each building in the East Village — the buildings are now annotated by hundreds of personal memories and meanings.
The project is extremely popular in the neighborhood and beyond, and has been featured in EV Grieve, Curbed, 6SqFt, and The Villager.
An example of a Building Blocks guided tour, curated by the organization Place Matters.