By Brian J. Pape, AIA As we recently passed the 18th anniversary of one of America’s greatest tragedies on September 11, 2001, the University of Alaska Fairbanks released a report on the destruction of the 47-story World Trade Center Building 7, which collapsed into its footprint, falling more than 100 feet at the rate of
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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
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Remembrances of the Lost Village: Judson Memorial Church
By Roger Paradiso On a cold and brisk October day in the Village, I made my way through Washington Square Park passing many fellow strangers. I wondered if they knew? I wondered if they knew that Judson Church and the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) were going back in time to celebrate the greatest cultural
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City Council Takes Legal Action Against Two Bridges Proposal
By Brian J. Pape, AIA In the Two Bridges area of the Lower East Side, a collection of five new residential towers are planned to include over 3,000 apartments, with retail stores at the base of each project, with 700 affordable units in the mix. However, in December 2018, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Manhattan
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Then&Now: Washington Square Park Fountain
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP In support of the many events taking place in April—Jane’s Walk, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation house tours, the 50th anniversary of the landmarking of most of the Greenwich Village District on April 29, 1969—we return to our beautiful Washington Square Park (WSP). The changes here, when considered
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Congestion Pricing & Access-a-Ride: Tech Breakthroughs
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Have you adjusted to the “Sharing Economy” yet? In NYC, the Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) is supposed to control the ride-hail world, but what has happened? Well, this has been a year, or decade, of turmoil in the ride-hail/ride-share world. The TLC oversaw 143,674 for-hire vehicles in 2015,
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Jackson Square Park Reopens After Extensive Renovation
By Michael D. Minichiello On April 2nd at 11:00 a.m., City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and others will preside over a newly renovated Jackson Square Park, the triangle formed by Horatio Street and Eighth and Greenwich Avenues. Among other events at the ceremony, three new pin oaks will be planted to join the older ones
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Hey Mt. Sinai: What’s the Plan?
By Penny Mintz At several public meetings in 2016 and 2017, Mt. Sinai/Beth Israel announced its plan to shutter Beth Israel Hospital and replace it with scattered out-patient services and a new 70-bed hospital in a two-story building on East 13th Street. It took steps toward this goal with the piecemeal closure of four hospital
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All We Can Afford Is Memories
By George Capsis Perhaps nothing has so suddenly dramatized the loss of the “old” Village as the sale of the building in which the beloved White Horse Tavern has sat unchanged since 1880. Generations and generations of young and not so young people have eased their way into a chair or booth there to sip
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Death By Architecture
By Ananth Sampathkumar Partner NDNY Architecture + Design New York is going through an architectural renaissance right now. The most famous architects from around the world are designing bespoke buildings and infrastructure for the city. The new designs range from museums to skyscrapers and even waterfront piers. The West Village has benefited from the signature
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Then&Now: That Gay Street!
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
