The WE STAND arch, Village Preservation's new public art and history installation honoring women of Greenwich Village, now stands in Washington Square Park, and on Tuesday, November 17, it gets its first guided walk. Follow in Her Footsteps, a free women's history walking tour, starts at noon, winds through the Village and ends at the arch. It is the first public program tied to the project, and pre-registration is required.

The women on the route

WE STAND celebrates women who lived and worked in the Village and East Village and changed the neighborhood and the country, a list that runs from Abigail Adams and Edna St. Vincent Millay to Marsha P. Johnson, Patti Smith, Jane Jacobs and Sonia Sotomayor.

The walk focuses on a set of notable Village residents, including:

  • Frances Perkins, who became the first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of Labor.
  • Elizabeth Blackwell, a pioneer among women in American medicine.
  • Billie Holiday, the singer and activist.

At the end of the route, the group reaches the arch itself, where the guides cover the wider roster of women the installation names.

Two nights later: a World War II art spy on Fifth Avenue

Village Preservation's November calendar has a second program in the neighborhood the same week. On Thursday, November 19, at 6 p.m., author Michelle Young talks about her book The Art Spy, the story of Rose Valland, who worked her way inside the Nazi leadership in occupied Paris during World War II to save masterpieces of art from being lost. The New York Public Library named the book one of the best of 2025.

The talk, co-sponsored by the Salmagundi Club, is in the club's Skylight Gallery at 47 Fifth Avenue at 12th Street. Young is joined by architect and historian Kate Reggev. The local thread: people in Valland's story had links to artists working in New York, among them the painter Roberto Matta, who lived at 137 MacDougal Street. Copies will be on sale from the Strand, and Young will sign books. Admission is free with pre-registration, using the code SPY.

More on the month's calendar

The group's November programs also include a Merchant's House Museum tour on November 15 about the Irish women who worked as domestic servants in nineteenth-century New York; a November 18 talk by photographer Peter Bennett on his book of 1980s East Village and Lower East Side photographs, Vibrant Chaos; and, on November 19, a tour of the Merchant's House built around its original builder, the abolitionist Joseph Brewster, and the hidden passage that makes it one of Manhattan's few documented Underground Railroad sites.

How to go

Both Greenwich Village programs are free, in person and require registration on Village Preservation's events page, which has the details for each. Washington Square Park is a short walk from the A, B, C, D, E, F and M trains at West Fourth Street-Washington Square. The Salmagundi Club at Fifth Avenue and 12th Street is closest to the 4, 5, 6, L, N, Q, R and W at 14th Street-Union Square and the L at Sixth Avenue.

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