By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP In the 17th Century Wouter van Twiller operated a brewery here before this tiny street was laid out in the early 19th Century. The first documented mention of Gay Street appeared in the Common Council minutes of April 23, 1827. Gay Street was widened in 1833. 1820s period houses
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Graffiti Art and HipHop Architecture
By Brian J. Pape, AIA There is a keenly watched legal battle being waged over creative expression, as noted in WestView News March and April 2018 articles by Catherine Revland, The 5Pointz Decision. The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA) has been litigated in a jury trial for the first time, ending February 2018 with
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Architect Costas Kondylis Has Died
By Brian J. Pape, AIA Costas Kondylis was the creative force behind so many built works it is hard to catalogue them. For West Villagers, the J.D. Carlisle Development’s One Morton Square, completed in 2004, is our most prominent example. As you may recall, it was flooded during Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge, overwhelming West Street
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A Tafel Surprise
By Jon D’Orazio I wish to share something I learned only last year, concerning Edgar Tafel, whom my architect father met at the ’67 AIA Convention. Together they arranged a summer job for me in Edgar’s office on 5th Avenue for that summer. It was just before I was to begin my Masters in Architecture
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Tribute to Architect Edgar Tafel
By Brian J. Pape, AIA 39 years ago, this summer, upon the publication of Edgar Tafel’s memoir Apprentice to Genius: Years with Frank Lloyd Wright, my father-in-law Rabbi Bernard Mandelbaum arranged an introduction with the author. I visited Mr. Tafel’s Greenwich Village architecture office and got the book inscribed with “To Brian Pape—with best wishes
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Designing Waste—Strategies for a Zero Waste City
By Mary Chandrahasan, Partner, NDNY Architecture + Design Here are some interesting numbers to get you thinking about waste. Did you know that nearly 40 percent of all food in the United States is wasted? Food waste accounts for 20 percent of materials sent to landfills and is the main contributor to landfill methane emissions,
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Escape to Nowhere
By Ananth Sampathkumar, Partner, NDNY Architecture + Design “Man Struck and Killed by Falling Debris from New York Building Fire Escape,” read the headline from an online paper covering the incident in Soho earlier this year. The irony is all too obvious. The structure that was meant to save lives ended up taking one—because of
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Then & Now: Ninth Avenue Meatpacking District
By Brian J. Pape, AIA THEN: On May 4, 1927, Hudson Street, in this view looking south from West 14th Street, shows the Herring Lock and Safe Company Building on the right (c.1849; northern third, c.1854-60). It was a five-story “Flatiron-type” factory, built in “Vernacular/Neo-Grec” style for Col. Herring, which is still virtually intact. The
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Historic MeatPacking District Development
Amazingly, since we last reported on the Gansevoort Market Historic District (Nov. 2017 issue), we see the Meat Packing District quickly becoming one of Manhattan’s “Silicon Alley” districts populated by high tech companies; not just Google/Alphabet, Apple, Samsung, Tesla, and the Chinese giant, Alibaba, but many, many others. Tech companies are drawn to the “cool”
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The West Village
By Lorraine Gibney Every person who has walked through the West Village understands that this place is unique. My family arrived in New York during the time of the Revolutionary War. Fortunately, much of our history during the 1800s was documented by my first cousin James Riordan Sr. Needless to say, the West Village has
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Developments at Hudson River Park – Celebrating 25 Years of Piers
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP On May 30, 2003, the first completed section of Hudson River Park (HRP), which began in 1999, was officially opened to the public in the West Greenwich Village portion from Pier 45 to Pier 51; and Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT) is celebrating, even while it struggles to meet
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West Village Images by Joel Gordon: Jefferson Market Library
OUR VILLAGE BEAUTY: For the last ten years I have been photographing the nuances of light during seasons, time of day and weather changes. As a photographer I feel the parts are greater than the whole; the beauty of the individual close-up of images of the Victorian Gothic architectural style of the Jefferson Market Library
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Through the Eyes of A Tourist
By Ananth Sampathkumar, Partner NDNY Architecture + Design The American Institute of Architects held its annual convention at the Javits Center in June. Over 25,000 architects, design professionals, manufacturers and trade representatives from all over America, and some from around the world, descended on the city for two days to take in everything that New
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Then & Now: Milkwagon and Old Houses, 8-10 Grove Street
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Abbott’s streetscapes often included horse-drawn wagons, relics of an earlier age. In this Grove Street photograph, taken the same day as several others near her Commerce Street studio, a horse-drawn wagon is her central subject. Milk distribution in New York City, dominated by two giant companies—Sheffield Farms and Borden
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Bridges in the Sky
By Ananth Sampathkumar and Mary Chandrahasan About two decades ago, we were first introduced to skybridges. Cesar Pelli, the famed Argentine American Architect, was explaining how his firm and Thorten Tomasetti, a structural engineering behemoth, devised a clever way to erect and support the tallest skybridge in the world at the Petronas Towers in Kuala
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Then & Now: Rhinelander Row
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Rhinelander Row is the eleven homes of three-storied, wooden-balconies built by landowner William Rhinelander in 1848, also known as “Cottage Row,” on the West side of Seventh Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets in the West Village. A New York Times article from 1937 said of Rhinelander Row, “With
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Sullivan’s Only Manhattan Masterpiece
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Louis Sullivan’s 1897 Bayard-Condict Building was New York’s first fully steel-framed skyscraper, overcoming official suspicions. A Pioneering Creation for America Louis Henri Sullivan (1856-1924) was already an internationally-acclaimed architectural pioneer of the modern skyscraper when the Bayard-Condict Building was built from 1897 to 99 at 65 Bleecker Street. The
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Louis Sullivan: An Original American Architect
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP What differentiates the icons of architecture from the hundreds of other talented practitioners that we never hear about? Sometimes it’s the first out with a new idea, and sometimes it’s others’ ideas in a whole new way. The revolutionary and brilliant Chicago architect Louis Henri Sullivan (1856-1924) has stood
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Renovating in the Big Apple—Thinking Outside the Box
By Ananth Sampathkumar and Mary Chandrahasan, Partners/NDNY Architecture + Design PLLC Renovating your new home or commercial space can be a daunting task, even for the most seasoned hand. Having designed and managed a few renovations in the city, we can lend some insight into counterintuitive decisions that owners should consider which could add value
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Cooper Union Dances Forward, Back, and Where? Who Knows?
By Carol Yost The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art is now thinking, very slowly, about having completely free tuition again. It reckons that in about 10 years it will have accomplished this goal. Many people say that’s way too far in the future. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859. He felt that
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Then & Now: The High Line on Washington Street: Before & After
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP It is too easy to forget; this neighborhood has been through many dramatic changes. Most of what is now land west of Greenwich Street was originally in the “North River” so as the riverbank was landfilled, the City laid out West Street by 1824, and bought the Newgate site,
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West Village Through the Lens of LABYL
By Mary Chandrahasan and Ananth Sampathkumar One bright sunny morning in March, we headed out for an early morning stroll in the Village equipped with our latest virtual toy called LABYL (or Learn About Buildings you Love). We set out to find and share under-appreciated architectural constructs both old and new. LABYL is a free
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Then & Now: Scenes Around Greenwich Village
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP This iconic landmark was almost destroyed in 1958 after the city and courts decided to vacate it. Through the concerted efforts of Village activists, a new Public Library branch was opened after restoration of intricate brick and stonework by architect Giorgio Cavaglieri from 1962-1967. More restoration was done in
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Then & Now: Scenes Around Greenwich Village
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP If it’s not obvious, this circa-1910 view looking north up 5th Avenue was taken from atop the Washington Arch at Washington Square Park. On the near right is Washington Mews behind the townhouses of Washington Square North, which was known as Waverly Place back then. On the near left
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Senior Share Apartments: Now Renting
By George Capsis I recently got a call from what sounded like a very nice senior lady who read my February 2018 front-page proposal to build connected apartments with seniors on one side and young people on the other. The young occupants would be just out of college and would want to live in the
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New Fence for the Jane Street Garden
By Barry Benepe A new cast iron picket fence, similar to the one now surrounding Abingdon Square Park, will be erected around the Jane Street Garden before the end of the year. The entrance to the garden will be relocated from Jane Street to 8th Avenue to conform to New York City Parks & Recreation
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Tenements As Urban Living Typology
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP The Grid of 1811 Tenements are simply defined as multi-family, rental apartment buildings for three or more families, with independent cooking facilities and sleeping quarters. (Originally, they had no indoor plumbing.) At a time when only the lower-income class dwelt in multi-family buildings, tenements were cheap to build, cheap
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Then & Now: Scenes Around Greenwich Village
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP In the depths of the Great Depression, 1936, Berenice Abbott was hired by the Federal Art Project (1935-1943) to photograph NYC, including this fascinating view in the West Village, standing near Hudson Street and looking west down Christopher Street. Front and center is the 9th Avenue Line—an elevated commuter
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God at the Drafting Board
By George Capsis If God sat down at the drafting board to design a perfect solution for seniors now living alone in a five-story walk-up, with an ancient dog that has to go four times a day, what would He come up with? He would have a nice, fresh-faced youngster offer a strong arm to
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Can a Landmarked Church Be Turned Into Condos?
Hi, Andrew. I know this happens. I know of two examples. But I don’t know exactly how a developer can fill a landmarked church exterior with condos, even though it’s been done. Do you have knowledge of this? I am writing an article for WestView on the conversion of St. Veronica into a concert hall.
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A True Win-Win Solution
By Joseph Reiver The City is moving forward with plans to destroy the Elizabeth Street Garden. It has selected Pennrose Properties, LLC as the developer and sugarcoated the plans with as many sweet-sounding details as possible. The City calls this plan a ‘win-win’ scenario and has plopped a hollow, offensively ironic cherry on top by
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160 Leroy Adds Shimmering Excitement to West Village Skyline
By Karen Rempel 160 Leroy Street is a new neighbor in the West Village, and as with all new neighbors, we might view it with a hint of suspicious distrust and even fear what this change might bring. Will it obscure the light, block our views, and destroy the character of the neighborhood we love?
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A Stroll Around the Neighborhood: Recent and Planned Developments in the St. John’s Terminal Area
By Brian J. Pape, AIA West Houston Street is considered the southern boundary for the West Village, but let’s step over the line a bit into the Hudson Square neighborhood. As we’ve reported in earlier issues of WestView, major new construction at the St. John’s Terminal building is anticipated. (That is where the High Line
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West Village Houses Threat: Developer’s Takeover Bid Considered
By Brian J Pape, AIA In four recent issues starting in April 2017, WestView News has covered the West Village Houses (WVH)—a 420-unit cooperative (co-op), 380 of which are owned by WVH residents and 40 of which are investor-owned. The 42 buildings were built as four-to-five-story walk-ups with the Mitchell-Lama subsidized affordable housing program in
