Women’s History Tour of Greenwich Village
Take The Women’s History Tour
The Village saw the first flowering of women’s drive for greater autonomy in America, including suffrage and birth control. It was also the spiritual center of the flappers, those nasty women who abandoned the corset (along with the prudery and subservience that it symbolized).
On this fun and informative two-hour tour, Professor Andrew Lear, founder of Shady Ladies Tours, invites you on an exploration of this little- known side of the Village. You’ll learn about such progressive leaders as Emma Goldman, the dangerous anarchist and “Red”; Margaret Sanger, who opened the first birth control clinic in the country but was also a eugenicist; Eleanor Roosevelt, arguably our greatest First Lady; and Rita Mae Brown, a later-generation feminist who became the partner of tennis star Martina Navratilova.
And you’ll see the places where women’s history happened, from the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory (now NYU’s Chemistry Building!) to the elegant townhouse where Planned Parenthood was founded. Come learn about the deep history of #MeToo and today’s rallying cry of “She Persisted” in New York’s original Bohemian neighborhood!
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Writer Emma Lazarus
Writer Emma Lazarus was born into a wealthy, assimilated Portuguese-Jewish family living on one of New York City’s most beautiful blocks (then and now). The pogroms of the late 19th century led to a wave of Jewish immigration in New York. Many Americanized Jews recoiled at the impoverished newcomers, but Lazarus was inspired instead to explore her Jewish identity and became involved in Jewish charitable causes. This inspired her most famous poem, “The New Colossus.” Lazarus wrote it for a charity auction to raise money for the Statue of Liberty, and fter her death, it was inscribed on a bronze plaque on the statue’s base.
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
Just half a block from leafy Washington Square Park stands the Brown Building, part of the NYU campus. But in 1911 this building housed, on the top three floors, a non-unionized sweatshop manufacturing ladies’ blouses (then known as ‘shirtwaists’): the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. This factory was the site of the worst industrial accident in New York City history—indeed one of the worst in US history—when a fire broke out on March 25, 1911. The exits were locked (to prevent employees taking breaks or stealing) and many employees ended up jumping to their deaths to escape the flames. In the end 143 people died, mostly young Italian and Jewish immigrant girls from the nearby Lower East Side.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt was remarkably progressive, given her upper-class background. She was a strong supporter of African-American civil rights in particular. Famously, in 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow the black soprano Marian Anderson to sing in their concert hall, Roosevelt arranged for her to sing from the steps of the Lincoln Monument. She also defended Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. It was thus fitting that President Truman appointed her the USA’s first delegate to the United Nations, where she chaired the Commission on Human Rights and played a key role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.