One of NYC’s most storied political clubs invests in its future by preserving its past

In 2023, members of the Village Independent Democrats voted to give up their clubhouse on Perry Street that they had leased “as long as anyone can remember,” recalled corresponding secretary Ed Yutkowitz. The space was a basement apartment across the hall from an all-night massage parlor and tiny at about 150 square feet. It also was the center of a massive political universe.

The clubhouse had been used for bagel breakfasts before petitioning drives, emergency meetings and for storing the club’s voluminous archives, which needed to find a new home. That’s why the club voted to allow Village Preservation to take over the collection, which is now partially available to browse in digital format, featuring archival information from 1955 to 1969. An ongoing effort to preserve the archives will be completed in three more phases ending in 2027. The second part of the archive, which will include 1970s archival information, is expected to be ready by the fall.

“The club’s history in many ways reflects the political history of Greenwich Village and New York City over the last 70 years,” Yutkowitz told City & State. “We had a wealth of information about our city’s politics, and knew we had to share that history with the public, especially scholars and young people.”

The archives portray the club as a structured and potent organization, producing community events and officials that helped lead the city into its future. Some of the club’s most notable accomplishments include supporting efforts to desegregate Manhattan’s Greenwich Village; busing members to Southern states to support the Civil Rights Movement; pushing back against a plan to to run traffic through Washington Square Park; preventing New York University and Robert Moses from demolishing blocks of historic neighborhood apartment buildings; as well as day-to-day advocacy for immigration reform, low-cost housing, equal rights and anti-corruption.

The archives depict a wide range of advocacy, including when the club organized a first-of-its kind daylong event in 1964 highlighting the predicament of incarcerated women. The only jail housing women at the time, the “women’s house of detention,” sat in the middle of Greenwich Village in the old Jefferson Courthouse on Sixth Avenue, which is now a public library.

Speakers at the event included socialist Dorothy Day and Jane Jacobs, author of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” Additional archival records of the event noted at the time that there were “more than 699 women in detention. Bail is not set or unavailable. There is no room for recreation, rehabilitation or even for a hospital ward. Prisoners released have minimal assistance in finding jobs, money, clothing.” The club vowed that its purpose was “to educate and inform the community about what conditions really are, what is being done and what can be done.”

The club’s archives also include its membership ranks over the years, with names like Ed Koch, who in 1962 launched his political career with an unsuccessful run for the Assembly. The archives show that Koch ran with an endorsement from Eleanor Roosevelt.

Roosevelt had come to know Koch through her many club activities, although it is not clear that she was a club member. The archives do not include membership records from its early years. Koch was chair of the club’s law committee. The archives even include a letter from Koch to the former first lady, regretfully apologizing and summarizing the political alliances that defeated his first candidacy. “I can only express my heartfelt thanks and admiration for your great courage and understanding in remaining with us even when it must have been a great source of embarrassment for you. I am only sorry that we could not overcome the impact of what occurred on the eve of the election, and vindicate your faith in our victory,” Koch wrote on Sept. 7, 1962, the day after his primary loss.

The archives also reflect how the club took on political corruption, mounting campaigns that included advertising and leaflets plastered throughout Greenwich Village that ultimately helped defeat the Tammany Hall regime. And the archives review how the club mounted and won successive political victories for all of its anti-Tammany Hall candidates, including Carol Greitzer, James Lanigan and Koch, who rose first to district leader in 1963 and to then to back-to-back City Council seats before being elected mayor in 1977.

The archives also reflect the challenges that the Village Independent Democrats and its members have faced. In 1982, Koch failed to gain the club’s endorsement in his bid for governor against Mario Cuomo, who at that time was the state’s lieutenant governor. The archives recall when the club voted to endorse Cuomo in an elementary school auditorium on West 11th Street. The space was packed with people and television cameras, throwing the club into the national spotlight. Koch never forgave the club and eventually left, taking his allies with him to form the Village Reform Democratic Club.

Yutkowitz, who joined the club after Koch’s departure, looked back at such moments and noted that “some of the most significant political events in New York City” had their roots in Greenwich Village, giving the archive and club its historic importance. “VID continues to be a dynamic political force in the neighborhood,” he added, “and is actively working on some of the most vital issues of our times.”