Greenwich Village Walking Tour

An informative walk through the West Village with Oscar Wilde Tours and guide Professor Andrew Lear.

Above: One of the places Oscar Wilde lived while in New York.

Above: The Stonewall Inn, historic photo and now. (All the building with the orange banner is no longer part of the bar.)

Above: Part of Visual Impact 2019 at The New York City AIDS Memorial. More info about the installation.

Above: Also part of The New York City AIDS Memorial, where visual artist Jenny Holzer chose and arranged passages from “Song of Myself”, poet Walt Whitman’s transcendent celebration of hope, unity, and human dignity, which are engraved in the Memorial’s granite pavement.

The significance of this Art Deco building at One 5th Avenue? It was where Sam Wagstaff lived (in the penthouse, no less). He was an art collector with some significance:

After seeing the exhibition “The Painterly Photograph, 1890-1914” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1973 and meeting Robert Mapplethorpe in 1972, Wagstaff became convinced that photographs were the most unrecognized and, possibly, the most valuable works of art.

It was the penthouse of this building that Mapplethorpe would create some of his most provocative work.

Unrelated to the tour, but beautiful antique tableware.

Thor at the corner of Christopher St. & Gay St.