By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP THEN: Once the most fashionable high-end residential neighborhood in the rapidly expanding metropolis, lower Fifth Avenue was home to wealthy and influential residents who fought to improve the military parade grounds built over the potter’s field burial grounds. On the far left of this archival panoramic photo from the
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Clarkson Towers Promises Affordable and Senior Units
By Brian J. Pape, AIA Patient visits doctor and asks, “How am I doing?” Doc: “I have good news and bad news.” Patient: “What’s the good news?” Doc: “Your knee surgery went very well.” Patient: “Yeah. What’s the bad news?” Doc: “You have lung cancer.” We have good news and bad news about the new
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Sellout at Pier 40 and St. John’s Terminal!
By Arthur Schwartz An eight-story (or higher) office tower on Pier 40? A million-square-foot Google hub across the street? In case you blinked, that’s what the West Village is in for at the western border of West Houston Street. And what are our elected leaders doing about it? NOTHING? First, some background. Back in 1996
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Diller’s Little Island Announced
By Brian J. Pape, AIA Diller Island, aka Pier 55, has a new name—“Little Island”— announced by a November 13th press release and cartoonish banners at the construction site. Almost five years ago, when WestView News coined the name “Diller Island” to describe the 2.7 acres of giant offshore tilting concrete mushrooms from 12th to 14th
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Disney World Comes to Hudson Square
By Brian J. Pape, AIA The Walt Disney Company has presented quite a straightforward background building for its new New York headquarters at so-called 4 Hudson Square, aka 137 Varick Street. The design breaks up the massive potential of 1.2 million square feet into two towers—each with a 22-story height limit, over a shared 9-story
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Then&Now: The Weathermen Bombsite—18 West 11th Street
By Brian J Pape, AIA THEN: The Greek Revival townhouse at 18 West 11th Street was originally built in 1845, one of four houses on the block built by Henry Brevoort Jr. for his children. It was later (in the 1920s) the home of Charles Merrill (of Merrill Lynch), whose son, the poet James Merrill,
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Hindsight: The West Village Committee in the Sixties
By Brian J. Pape, AIA Today’s residents of the West Village owe a lot to the activists who lived here before us. They say “Hindsight is 20/20,” but we still speculate on “what might have been.” Google the still active committee, WestVillageCommittee.html, and you’ll find a little history and their current activities, but you have
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Bell Labs’ Second-Best-Kept Secret
By Catherine Revland Part Two of a series, You Must Remember This, about World War II and its relevance to our times “How do you manage genius? You don’t.” —Mervin Kelly, director of Bell Research Labs In the industrial Monopoly game of the 1940s, Bell Labs and Western Electric were Boardwalk and Park Place, an
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Gentrifying Public Housing Estates: The Profit Motive is Sharper than Bureaucracy
By Brian J Pape, AIA New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is the city’s biggest landlord, and if any of the city’s other landlords had the track record of broken heating and plumbing, mold, lead poisoning, cockroach infestations, and rodent attacks on sleeping infants, they would deserve to be jailed. But this city no longer
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Structural Report and Eye-Witnesses Conclude- WTC Building 7 Didn’t Collapse from Fire
By Brian J. Pape, AIA The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) recently released an independent report on the destruction of 47-story World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7), which collapsed into its own ‘footprint’, falling more than 100 feet at the rate of gravity (‘free-fall’= no obstruction to the pull of gravity) for a third
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Planes or Bombs? 9/11 Revisited
By Barry Benepe In May 2018, the New York Times published a report by Elizabeth Williamson in which she told readers how Alex Jones, “an online conspiracy theorist,” claimed that the Sandy Hook gun massacre of 20 first graders and six adults never happened but was a “hoax” invented by “government gun-grabbers.” As a founder
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HRPT Will Build a Full-Size Field on Gansevoort Park!
By Brian J Pape, AIA Cautious optimism filled the air as residents reconvened for the last Gansevoort Peninsula “concept phase” joint meeting of the Community Board 2 (CB2) Parks & Waterfront Committee and the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT) at the 75 Morton middle school cafeteria on September 10th. James Corner Field Operations (JCFO), the
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Then&Now: Washington & Christopher High Line
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, Architecture Editor Then: This 1940 Municipal Tax photo of 634-648 Washington Street views its intersection with Christopher Street, looking southwest. The New York Central Railroad built the St. John freight terminal and this viaduct from 1930-34, succumbing to pressure condemning the numerous pedestrian accidents while the 13-mile surface track, built in
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Pier 40 Construction Report
By Brian J. Pape, AIA The on-going construction and locked gates to the surrounding walkways at Pier 40 have prompted readers’ questions about what is going on. We’ve reported previously that this work is primarily for the repair and reinforcing of the hundreds of pilings that support the Pier 40 platform. Sometimes the contractor has
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Chelsea’s Fulton Houses Get Gentrified
By George Capsis Any historic review of public housing in cities like Chicago or St. Louis offers images of massive controlled demolitions when the sprawling public projects, which have run out of money to make even essential repairs, have turned into leaking, rodent-infested, crumbling prisons for the poor. When it is clearly apparent that the money to fix them
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Then&Now: Seventh Avenue South/200 West 11th Street
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, Architecture Editor THEN: This site, addressed 192 Seventh Avenue South in the 1940 tax photo, was on a forlorn thoroughfare because the Seventh Avenue extension below West 12th Street cut a swath through the established neighborhood, leaving odd walls, yards and slivers of lot sizes, like this one just south
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St. John’s Resurrects Its Lost Fence
By Brian J. Pape, AIA Pastor Mark Erson, of St. John’s Lutheran Church at 81 Christopher Street, wrote to let us know that “after 21 years of being behind an 8-foot fence, we have restored a good portion of the [church’s] original fence” in front of the main church entry. It seems that 21 years
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NYU Development on Mercer Street Rises
By Brian J. Pape, AIA New York University’s (NYU) scope of development for their enlarged Greenwich Village campus includes razing the Jerome S. Coles Sports Center at 20–40 East Houston Street and constructing a massive 750,000-square-foot complex bordered by Houston Street, Mercer Street and Bleecker Street, located directly to the east of I. M. Pei’s
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Renovating 35 Perry Street: Thomas Merton Lived Here
By Brian J. Pape, AIA American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion, Thomas Merton wrote more than 70 books, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism. Merton developed his faith while living in New York City, not often thought to be conducive to spirituality. Merton was born on January 31st, 1915, in Prades, France, to Owen,
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Seventy-Six Eighth Avenue Development Revealed
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, Architecture Editor The busy southeast corner of Eighth Avenue and West 14th Street will get a substantial improvement over the previous two-story “taxpayer.” Surprisingly, the 120-foot-tall structure has shrunk two floors and 7,000 square feet from earlier designs submitted by Gene Kaufman Architect, P.C. (GKA). Seventy-six Eighth Avenue, in this
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Rebirth of a Jewel: Eero Saarinen’s Landmark TWA Terminal Has Been Restored as the Centerpiece of a New Hotel at JFK
By Eric Uhlfelder It’s not easy finding your way in. The AirTrain appears to let you off close. But it’s a long walk before you can figure your way into the Terminal’s iconic access tubes. Parking doesn’t get you any closer, unless you’re willing to walk down an inbound car ramp and cross access roads.
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When Buildings Sing
By Ananth Sampathkumar, Partner—NDNY Architecture + Design Cesar Pelli, the world-renowned Argentinian architect, died on July 19 at the age of 92 in New Haven, Connecticut. The architect gained international acclaim for the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, a pair of skyscrapers 1,483’ tall built from 1993-1996. The design combined Islamic iconography of the ‘Rub el
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(Why) Build a Full-Size Field on Gansevoort Park?
By Brian J Pape, AIA Architecture Editor A crowd of over 100 anxiously awaited the unveiling of new concept designs for the Gansevoort Peninsula part of Hudson River Park (HRP) on July 24. The joint meeting of the CB2 Parks Committee and the HRP Trust (HRPT) commenced at the new 75 Morton middle school cafeteria,
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What’s Happening at Clarkson Square?
By Brian J. Pape, AIA Architecture Editor Chances are you don’t recognize the name, but in the real estate world you can choose any name you want for your projects or even for whole neighborhoods. Witness the One Morton Square moniker from a few years back and, now, the West SOHO label for Hudson Square.
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The Hottest Street in the Village
By Ananth Robert Sampathkumar, Partner NDNY Architecture + Design It was a particularly warm day in July. I had barely parked my Citibike at the docking station at Eighth and Greenwich Avenues, when I felt the incredible heat reflecting off 1 Jackson Square. Completed in 2008, the 11-storey high-end residential condominium sits on a corner
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St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine
By Brian J. Pape, AIA In 1916-1919, five Greek families raised $25,000 to buy a tavern at 155 Cedar Street, a three-story rowhouse built around 1830 as a private residence, and transformed it into a church in the bustling immigrant neighborhood populated by large numbers of Greek, Lebanese and Syrian immigrants. It was destroyed in
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Then&Now: 501 Hudson and Christopher Street
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Then: This March 1933 photo (matching an earlier 1927 photo) of the once four-story-corner-building-next-to-a-3-story-mixed-use rowhouse, describes both as 501 Hudson Street and 131 Christopher Street. Even the GVHD Designation Report of 4/29/69 describes these addresses as one lot, though clearly they are not one building. The 12 over 12
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We Need Robert Moses
By George Capsis Robert Moses’ career ended when he wanted to build an elevated highway across Canal Street, and we locals rose in protest and closed his book forever, but in his early days when he was casually condemning bungalows in the path of the LIE he did so with imperial immunity because the car
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550 Washington Street is Moving Forward
By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Oxford’s development along West Street, across from the Pier 40 and Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT) headquarters, was originally the 1930s St. John’s Terminal for the New York Central freight railroad viaduct (now the High Line). It will soon be an industrial-loft-type office building when nine stories are added
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The View From the Kitchen
By Isa Covo This month my intention was to write about iconic American songstresses. The idea came to me as I was listening to Billy Holiday, and then the fire at Notre Dame de Paris happened. From the time I heard the news, I was glued to the television and saw the spire fall, the
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Pier 40: What to Do, Again
By Brian J. Pape To quote a beloved Yogi-ism: “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” At a heated Community Board 2 public hearing on April 18th, the CB2 response to elected officials’ request to change the Hudson River Park (HRP) Act of 1998 was discussed, specifically regarding possible legislation to allow development of commercial
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New Intergenerational Housing Ideas
By Brian J. Pape George Capsis asked me to please find the nonprofit company he saw in a TV presentation about “shared” apartments designed for unrelated individuals who are living collectively on either side of a shared kitchen and bath because this was like senior share apartments he wrote about in an earlier edition. A
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THEN AND NOW: The New School for Social Research Celebrates 100 Years!
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP For the first decade of its existence, beginning in 1919, the New School for Social Research and Alvin Saunders Johnson (1874-1971), a co-founder and leader of the institution from 1922 through 1945, operated out of six renovated brownstones on West 23rd Street. Johnson and others had been on the
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The Shed at Hudson Yards
By Donna Schaper The Shed has opened its doors at Hudson Yards—and it will benefit from the best tax write-off yet for a structure that probably wins the prize for the most public money ever given to a development in New York City. That takes some doing. Calling itself “a new ritual space,” bothers me
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Lamenting the Loss of Our Lady
By Barry Benepe We have traveled to Paris every year for a month in the early autumn, staying on the west end of the Ile St. Louis adjacent to the Pont St. Louis leading to the Ile de la Cite and Notre Dame. We could look over at the eastern apse of Notre Dame with
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A Historic Renovation for Jefferson Market Library
By Frank Collerius For 50 years, the Jefferson Market Library has been a staple of the Greenwich Village community, offering traditional library services and innovative programs such as Jefferson Market University, popular storytime programs, and exhibitions that celebrate the history of our neighborhood. The building—originally a courthouse well known for its role in notable criminal
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The Vessel Arrives
West Village Images by Joel Gordon The $200 million centerpiece of Hudson Yards, The Vessel comes from British designer Thomas Heatherwick and is an inverted honeycomb-like structure of platforms and stairways. There are 75 pieces in total, each piece weighing about 93,000 pounds. It has 2,500 stairs and is 150 feet tall. Other examples can be
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Restoration Hardware Transforms Historic Market District Wagon Shed
By Martica Sawin No doubt many West Villagers received, along with the Saturday, March 16th, New York Times, a glossy 360-page publication whose cover featured the former wagon shed in the Gansevoort Market Historic District. This was once the location of Pastis—across from the Gansevoort Hotel—and more recently, an empty site fronted by a thin brick facade
