As WestView was about to go to press on December 31, Governor Cuomo vetoed the legislation which would have allowed an 8 story plus office building to be built on Pier 40. In his veto message he highlighted the need for green space in Manhattan. My threat to sue over the structure was carried broadly
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Then&Now: Lower Fifth Avenue
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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Disappearing Diamonds? Diemut Strebe’s Redemption of Vanity at NYSE
“I’m wearing a 20-carat diamond on my necklace. What, you can’t see it? Believe me, it’s gorgeous!” Imagine if all our jewelry was invisible. What would it be worth? Artist Diemut Strebe wanted to find out the answer to this question. What is the intrinsic value of an object? Of a work of art?
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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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Maggie B’s Quick Clicks
”I REALLY CAN’T STAY – ‘CAUSE , BABY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE!” All photos by Maggie Berkvist.
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Dusty Berke Joins the Ranks of Award-Winning Artists at the Salmagundi Club’s Village Preservation Exhibit
Dusty Berke received an award for her arresting photograph Playing Statues on Bleecker on October 16th at the prestigious Salmagundi Club. The photograph of West Village model and photojournalist Karen Rempel originally appeared in the “Karen’s Quirky Style” column in the May 2019 issue of WestView News. A combination of elements contribute to the photo’s
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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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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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View From My 91st Floor Window
By Karin Batten In 2001 I had just moved to the Westbeth artist housing community, in the West Village, two months prior to the 9/11 attack. On the day of 9/11 the primaries for mayor were going on. I had just changed my district in New York City so I was re-registering to vote. I
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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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The Youth Orchestra of Milan Joins The Youth Orchestra of New York
Two of what might be called the world’s most prestigious youth orchestras will come together on August 9th and 10th in joint performances here in New York. From Milan, the home of Giuseppe Verdi, the Orchestra Sinfonica Junior (OSJ) joins The Children’s Orchestra Society of New York (COS), the youth orchestra founded in 1962 by
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The Middle East: A Source of Love, Peace and Art
By J. Taylor Basker Drones shot down by hostile powers, captures of tankers, divisive politics, threats of nuclear war, sanctions, kidnapping, bombs, beheadings—this is what we hear about the Middle East as Islamophobia in Europe and the U.S. grows. Yet, in Amman, Jordan this visiting Greenwich Village artist discovered a radically different situation. I was
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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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Landmark Preservation Today
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, Architecture Editor The loss of the original NYC Penn Station caused citizens here to focus on the importance of our monumental buildings and special historic homes being lost. But the movement to preserve special places grew. Economic and population pressures continued to threaten our historic fabric, from Plymouth Rock to
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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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Transformation Engineered by Andrea T
By Karen Rempel | Fashion Editor Engineered by Andrea T is the design studio of transformation artist Andrea Thurlow, a bespoke tailor with a flair for the dramatic. She designs evening wear, day wear, and Broadway costumes with a personal aesthetic using top-quality natural fabrics and an engineer’s precision methodology. My favorite piece by Andrea
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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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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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Small Residential Lots Get a City Competition Treatment
By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC (BISL) is a design competition to find housing solutions for smaller than standard lots (<25’ x 100’), and to explore their potential to contribute to affordable housing options across various site and neighborhood conditions. More than 444 proposals were received from 36 countries
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Jefferson Market Library Gets ADA Rehab
By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP The venerable Jefferson Market Library, inside the former Third Judicial District Courthouse building (ca. 1874-77), is getting an extensive ADA rehab. Since November 27, 1967 the building has served as the Jefferson Market Library—saved from the demolition ball by community preservation activists, and remodeled by architect Giorgio Cavaglieri. As
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I.M. Pei’s New York Legacy
By Ananth Robert Sampathkumar, Partner–NDNY Architecture + Design Ieoh Ming Pei, the famed New York based Chinese-American Modernist Architect, died last month, at the young age of 102. During his illustrious architectural career, he designed a vast array of iconic buildings around the world including the Grand Louvre Modernization in Paris and the John F.
