Located just South of Union Square, Grace Church was built by noted architect James Renwick, Jr. in 1846-1847. And Renwick was incredibly green in his career—only 24 years old—when he got this particular job. Renwick took a Gothic approach, impressing Reverend Thomas House Taylor, who had just returned from a year-long trip to Europe. Perhaps inspired by the old world’s lavish and ornate architecture, Reverend Taylor agreed that Renwick’s plan was most appropriate for the ever-expanding, fashionable Grace Church congregation.

The land on which the church was built was purchased from Henry Brevoort, Renwick’s uncle, a successful Dutch farmer and landholder best remembered for his friendship with Washington Irving. At 802 Broadway, at the intersection of East 10th Street and Broadway, Grace Church is one of the earliest examples of Gothic architecture found in the United States. Praised for its greatness, the church was designated an individual landmark on March 15, 1966. 

And while Grace Church was when built seen as one of the best examples of Gothic design in the country, it differs noticeably from similarly styled cathedrals of its time. Most notably, the church is made mainly of Sing Sing Marble rather than stone. The ecclesiastical character of Grace Church is carried over into its rectory next door at 804 Broadway in its use of corner buttresses with pinnacles, gables decorated with Gothic details (crockets and finials) and the use of pointed-arch windows both in the gables and elsewhere. Flamboyant tracery adorns the windows, as in the Church, and even the bay windows are in themselves a study in Gothic detail.

Though funds were limited at first, support for the church grew over the next few decades, as seen in investments in its architecture (for example, the original wooden steeple was rebuilt in marble in 1883).

Due to its growing popularity as a place of worship, in 1894 the church opened Grace Church School (GCS), New York City’s first choir boarding school with an enrollment of 16 boys. In 1902, a chorister’s house was constructed next door at 88 Fourth Avenue. The church would eventually own 80-102 Fourth Avenue in order to house the ever-expanding Choir School and its various ministries. 

In 1912, James Renwick Jr.’s successor firm, Renwick, Aspinwall, and Tucker, designed and built the six-story structure at 86 Fourth Avenue. Taking its cues from Grace Church, 86 Fourth Avenue is designed in the Gothic Revival Style, clad in stone, and has a large Tudor arch at its entry. A three-story oriel spans the second through the fourth floor with leaded glass at its second-story windows. Grace Church School currently occupies the building.

By 1930, the GCS was no longer solely a choir school. And by 1947, it was coeducational, enrolling boys and girls representing various religious faiths, becoming a member of the Guild of Independent Schools of New York City.

Due to its growing student body, Grace Church School continued to expand its physical presence South of Union Square with the building next door at 84 Fourth Avenue. Constructed in 1951-52 (no. 86 was undergoing a renovation at the same time), it seamlessly blends the same Gothic style of its neighboring structures, just a more pared down and simpler version. The firm on the job was Moore and Hutchins, who specialized in academic architecture. Also clad in stone, it has groupings of slender rectilinear windows on each of the floors and a decorative parapet. Built just over a century after the church’s construction, 84 Fourth Avenue is a prime example of a historically contextual architecture.

In 2006, Grace Church School and Grace Church separated, and the school purchased 86 Fourth Avenue. And in 2012, the school expanded to include a high school at 46 Cooper Square.

While no longer officially connected, both Grace Church and Grace Church School remain integral parts of the neighborhood South of Union Square’s history, and both are prominent manifestations of Gothic Revival architecture in New York City. The the church and its surrounding school buildings reflect nearly two centuries of architectural and institutional history.

The post Back to School at Grace Church first appeared on Village Preservation.

Here are nine incredible programs to look forward to this month.

Remembering 9/11 and Reclaiming Ground Zero

September begins with a special screening of 9/11: Reclaiming Ground Zero on Tuesday, September 15. Marking 25 years since the events of September 11, 2001, the documentary examines the difficult questions New Yorkers faced in the aftermath: What should happen to the site of the World Trade Center? Who should decide? And how could a devastated city come together to imagine a future?

The film explores the remarkable civic process that brought 5,000 New Yorkers together to consider the future of Ground Zero. Following the screening, a guided discussion will give attendees an opportunity to share their own thoughts, memories, and reflections on how 9/11 affected New York City and its neighborhoods.

Freedom’s Edge: Greenwich Village and the American Revolution

Village Preservation’s yearlong Revolutionary Village series continues on Thursday, September 17, with Freedom’s Edge: Greenwich Village and the American Revolution.

This 90-minute walking tour, co-sponsored by the Merchant’s House Museum, looks beyond the familiar stories of generals, battles, and Founding Fathers to examine the Revolution through the streets and waterfront of Greenwich Village. In 1776, the Hudson River waterfront was a military corridor and a place of labor, including the labor of enslaved Black New Yorkers. It was also a landscape in which the promises of liberty and freedom were experienced very differently by different people.

The tour asks an essential question: Whose freedom did the American Revolution promise? By examining the physical landscape where these histories unfolded, the program offers a more complicated and inclusive understanding of America’s founding—and of the Village’s place within it.

A Garden in the Heart of Old New York

On Saturday, September 19, Village Preservation and Merchant’s House Museum members are invited to step inside one of Manhattan’s remarkable surviving 19th-century spaces with a Members-Only Garden Tour at Merchant’s House Museum.

Led by Merchant’s House Museum Head Gardener John Rommel, the tour will explore the museum’s lush historic garden in full bloom. Participants will also enjoy a special members’ reception featuring light refreshments and autumnal treats, followed by a plant sale.

For anyone interested in historic landscapes, architecture, or the experience of everyday life in 19th-century New York, this is a rare opportunity to experience a hidden oasis while connecting with one of the city’s most important preserved historic interiors and gardens.

The Women Behind New York’s Nightlife Revolutions

On Tuesday, September 22, The Unseen Revelers takes to the streets of Greenwich Village and the East Village to uncover the stories of women who helped transform New York nightlife.

The 90-minute walking tour highlights female activists, artists, performers, producers, and cultural figures who used taverns, bars, lounges, speakeasies, and clubs as places to build communities, introduce new art forms, advance political ideas, and reshape popular culture.

The stories range from Billie Holiday and her landmark performance of “Strange Fruit” to dancer Norma Miller, Sylvia Robinson’s role in bringing Hip Hop to new audiences at Webster Hall, Ruza Blue’s groundbreaking Hip Hop events, photographer Martha Cooper, and Patti Astor’s gathering of New Wave musicians and graffiti artists.

Together, these stories reveal that nightlife was about far more than entertainment. It could be a space for experimentation, activism, cultural exchange, and community-building.

Rethinking the Housing Debate

On Wednesday, September 23, Village Preservation continues its ongoing Cracks in the YIMBY Consensus series with Part 4: The Zoning Alibi.

Co-sponsored by the City Club of New York and by CNU NYC, the program examines one of the most consequential assumptions in contemporary urban policy: that restrictive zoning is the primary cause of high housing costs, and that deregulation and increased construction will necessarily make housing more affordable.

Economic geographers Tom Kemeny and Maximilian Buchholz will discuss research conducted with Gregory Randolph and Michael Storper that challenges aspects of this conventional narrative. The panel will consider the relationship between zoning, housing prices, income inequality, and the limitations of relying on a construction boom to address housing affordability.

Moderated by Village Preservation Special Projects Director Juan Rivero, this virtual program promises a substantive discussion of the policy choices shaping the future of New York and other major American cities.

Architecture and Nature in the Gilded Age

September’s architectural history program on Sunday, September 27 turns the spotlight on two major 19th-century figures with deep connections to Greenwich Village: Calvert Vaux and Frederick Clarke Withers.

Architectural historian Francis R. Kowsky will discuss the careers of these two important designers and their contributions to American architecture and landscape design. Vaux, best known as the co-designer of Central Park, and Withers were also responsible for important work in and around New York City, including the Jefferson Market Courthouse.

Co-sponsored by Jefferson Market Library and the Calvert Vaux Preservation Alliance, the program will also explore restoration efforts at The Point, the historic Hudson Valley estate designed by Vaux for the Hoyt family in 1855.

It is an opportunity to consider how architecture and landscape were intertwined during the Gilded Age—and how the work of these designers continues to influence our understanding of historic New York.

Village Nights: The 1970s with Terre Roche

That same evening, September 27, Village Preservation returns to the Bitter End for another installment of Richard Barone’s Village Nights, a series celebrating the musical history of Greenwich Village by decade.

Part of the Bitter End’s 65th anniversary celebration and Village Preservation’s Revolutionary Village programming, the series looks at the Village’s extraordinary musical legacy through performances, conversations, and stories from people who experienced it.

The September installment focuses on the 1970s, a decade of extraordinary musical experimentation and transformation in Greenwich Village and beyond, with special guest Terre Roche. The program continues the series’ exploration of how clubs, performers, songwriters, and audiences made the Village a crucial center of American musical culture.

Behind the Scenes at the Keith Haring Foundation

Back by popular demand, on Tuesday, September 29, we have the unique opportunity to explore the legacy of one of the most recognizable artists associated with downtown New York: Keith Haring.

This behind-the-scenes tour of the Keith Haring Foundation will introduce participants to the organization’s mission of sustaining, expanding, and protecting Haring’s artistic legacy and ideals. The Foundation’s collections and archives preserve materials documenting Haring’s life, work, and the cultural world in which he lived and worked.

As part of our Revolutionary Village programming, the visit also offers a chance to consider Haring’s contribution to the continuing story of New York’s downtown arts community, and the importance of preserving not only buildings and streetscapes, but also the cultural histories that developed within them.

Death Matters: The Neighborhood Funeral Home

September’s programs conclude on Wednesday, September 30, with a subject that is simultaneously deeply personal and an important part of neighborhood history: Death Matters: From Your Parlor to Ours – The Growth of the Neighborhood Funeral Home.

Presented with Merchant’s House Museum, this special installment of the Death Matters series marks the centennial of the Greenwich Village Funeral Home. Thanatologist Matilda Garrido will speak with Peter DeLuca, President of the Greenwich Village Funeral Home, about the transformation of American funeral practices.

In the 19th century, funerals commonly took place in the home. Over time, changing social customs and the professionalization of end-of-life services helped give rise to the neighborhood funeral home. These institutions became woven into the fabric of communities, providing services at some of the most difficult moments in people’s lives.

Looking at the history of the Greenwich Village Funeral Home provides a fascinating window into a century of changes in the neighborhood; and in the ways New Yorkers have lived, mourned, and cared for one another.

Join Us This September

We hope you’ll join us for several of these programs and continue exploring the history, architecture, culture, and preservation of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo with Village Preservation.

Remember, Village Preservation Members have the opportunity to register for our events early. And, we offer special members-only programming throughout the year. Don’t miss your chance to take advantage of these great benefits and become a member today!

The post September Programs: Memory, Music, and Architecture first appeared on Village Preservation.

One of the most important literary groups to emerge from this community was the Pen League, or al-Rābitah al-Qalamiyyah, also referred to as the “Mahjar School.” The group began convening in New York in 1916 and was formally organized in April 1920. Its members included some of the best-known writers of the Mahjar movement, including co-founders Kahlil Gibran and Mikhail Naimy, as well as Nasib Arida and Ameen Rihani. Influenced by mysticism, philosophy, and spirituality, the writers of the Pen League sought to rethink the form and substance of Arabic literature and language. They viewed their literary community as a way to preserve their cultural traditions amid an increasingly Americanized society. Nasib Arida founded Al-Funun (“The Arts”) in 1913, while Abd al-Masih Haddad founded As-Sayeh (“The Traveler”), publications that helped writers in New York share their work and ideas with readers across the United States and abroad.

Kahlil Gibran, president of the Pen League, found a home for both his art and writing in Greenwich Village at 51 West 10th Street, in the now-demolished Tenth Street Studio Building. After moving to New York, he lived and worked there for many years, surrounded by other artists who had made the building their home and studio, including Winslow Homer and William Merritt Chase. His studio was a gathering place for friends and fellow artists, where they came together for conversations, to look at art, and to celebrate. It was also where Gibran wrote The Prophet, the mystical and lyrical work that would make him an internationally known writer. Today, his former studio is featured on Village Preservation’s Greenwich Village Historic District map.

Ameen Rihani, a Lebanese-American writer and co-founder of the Pen League, also had ties to New York’s artistic community. Rihani joined the New York Pleiades Club, a literary and artistic society that was part of the bohemian life of Greenwich Village. The club provided a place for artists, writers, actors, and diplomats to meet and socialize. When Rihani’s The Book of Khalid was published in 1911, the Pleiades Club held a reception in his honor, where the club’s president crowned him with a laurel garland. Kahlil Gibran, who provided the illustrations for the book, was also part of Rihani’s circle at the time.

The connections between Gibran, Rihani, and the Pen League also link Greenwich Village to the Arab literary community that developed in Little Syria and the surrounding Lower West Side. While Little Syria was an important center of Arab immigrant life, writers like Gibran and Rihani also took part in the literary and artistic life of Greenwich Village. Their stories offer a glimpse into the connections between these two downtown communities.

The post From Little Syria to Greenwich Village: The Pen League and New York’s Arab Literary World first appeared on Village Preservation.

At the end of 1915, she left Portland, Oregon, and a marriage that could no longer hold the size of the life she wanted. She came east for journalism, for John Reed, and for the possibility of living without asking the old world to approve.

It was not a clean beginning. Bryant was not a clean story. Desire, ambition, courage, contradiction — she carried all of it into Greenwich Village.

Records place Bryant and Reed at 43 Washington Square South (demolished), between MacDougal and Sullivan Streets, in 1916. The address matters. History has a habit of turning women into atmosphere, especially when they stand beside famous men. Bryant was not part of the scenery. She was in the room with a desk of her own.

Oregon Before the Village

Louise Bryant was born Anna Louise Mohan in San Francisco on December 5, 1885. She later took the surname of her stepfather, Sheridan Bryant. After studying at the University of Nevada, she transferred to the University of Oregon in 1906 and graduated with a degree in history in January 1909.

Portland gave her an early stage. She wrote poetry, drew illustrations, worked in theater, freelanced for The Oregonian, and became a society columnist and illustrator for the Oregon Spectator. She also sent work to radical publications, including The Masses.

On November 13, 1909, she married dentist Paul Trullinger. She continued using Bryant, maintained her own studio, and resisted the smaller life that marriage was expected to build around a woman. Their home became a gathering place for artists and radicals. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman came through. Radical ideas did not arrive in whispers. They came to dinner.

Bryant was drawn deeper into the suffrage movement through activist Sara Bard Field. On May 8, 1912, she was elected recording secretary of the Oregon branch of the College Equal Suffrage League. She traveled through Oregon with Field and activists Emma and Clara Wold, giving speeches and lectures in support of voting rights for women.

That June, Bryant appeared on the league’s suffrage float during Portland’s Rose Festival and Flag Day celebrations. Oregon had already rejected women’s suffrage five times. In November 1912, the sixth campaign finally succeeded, with 61,265 votes in favor and 57,104 against.

The ballot was won in Oregon. Bryant did not mistake one victory for the end of the work.

A Room at 43 Washington Square South

Bryant left Portland on the final day of 1915 and arrived in New York at the beginning of January 1916. She had fallen in love with Reed, but romance was only part of the crossing. New York offered the work she wanted. Greenwich Village offered a place where a woman might live outside the approved arrangement and still find company.

Reed had planned to rent Bryant a separate room near his apartment at 43 Washington Square South. Instead, she moved in with him. They were not yet married. The Village hardly blinked.

Inside the apartment, they kept separate workrooms with a hallway between them. That hallway says almost as much as the romance. Two writers. Two ambitions. Two doors.

Reed would later be associated with 1 Patchin Place, where he reportedly worked on Ten Days That Shook the World. But 43 Washington Square South is the address most strongly connected to Bryant’s first months in the Village, when she began forcing her way into New York journalism under her own name.

Women Who Would Not Behave

Bryant entered a neighborhood already alive with argument.

At Heterodoxy, the feminist club founded by Marie Jenney Howe in 1912, women gathered for lunch at Polly’s Restaurant, then located at 135 MacDougal Street, just around the corner from her home. The only requirement for membership was an unwillingness to be orthodox. Its circle included labor organizers, lawyers, writers, artists, and suffragists, among them Inez Milholland, Crystal Eastman, and Mary Heaton Vorse.

These women did not agree about everything. That was the point.

Emma Goldman, who had lived at 208 East 13th Street, argued that the vote alone could not free women from economic dependence, sexual repression, or the violence of the state. Bryant had already known Goldman in Portland. In the Village, she found an entire geography of women who treated disagreement as a form of devotion.

They were not asking to be admitted politely into the old world. They were trying to build another one.

The Page and the Stage

Four months after leaving Oregon, Bryant published “Two Judges” in the April 1916 issue of The Masses. The socialist magazine operated from 91 Greenwich Avenue between 1913 and 1917, publishing political writing, fiction, poetry, and art that challenged war, labor exploitation, censorship, and the policing of women’s lives.

Bryant also found another language in theater.

During the summer of 1916, the Provincetown Players staged her one-act play, The Game, on the same bill as Eugene O’Neill’s Bound East for Cardiff. Later that year, the company established a Greenwich Village stage at 139 MacDougal Street. In 1918, it moved just a couple of doors south to the former stable at 133 MacDougal Street that became known as the Provincetown Playhouse (both locations were around the corner from Bryant’s home on Washington Square South just off MacDougal Street; more about the Playhouse HERE).

The rooms were small. The ideas were not.

Bryant and Reed married on November 9, 1916. By then, she was no longer simply the woman who had followed him from Oregon. She was publishing, writing plays, moving through feminist circles, and making a place for herself among the Village radicals who believed art should disturb the furniture.

She Went Where History Was Breaking Open

In 1917, Bryant reported from wartime France. That August, she and Reed traveled to Petrograd, arriving as the Russian Revolution entered its most decisive months.

Bryant attended political meetings, moved through soldiers’ quarters and public dining halls, and interviewed figures across the revolution. She paid particular attention to women whose power was easily reduced or ignored by other correspondents, including Catherine Breshkovsky, Maria Spiridonova, Alexandra Kollontai, and the women serving in Russian military units.

Her reporting became Six Red Months in Russia, published in 1918, before Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World appeared the following year.

For too long, Bryant’s work has been treated as a smaller moon circling Reed’s achievement. The pages tell another story. She was watching with her own eyes. Choosing her own subjects. Writing her own revolution.

From the Suffrage Float to the District Jail

Bryant’s fight for voting rights did not remain in Oregon.

In February 1919, while in Washington, D.C., she joined a National Woman’s Party Watchfire demonstration outside the White House. Protesters burned an effigy of President Woodrow Wilson, condemning his failure to secure the federal suffrage amendment.

Bryant was arrested and sentenced to five days in the District Jail. She served three days and joined other imprisoned suffragists in a hunger strike.

Seven years earlier, she had ridden through Portland on a decorated suffrage float. Now the fight had carried her to a jail cell.

History rarely moves in a straight line. Sometimes it marches. Sometimes it starves. Sometimes it sits behind bars and refuses to apologize.

The Name in the Body of the Page

John Reed died of typhus in Moscow in 1920. Bryant continued working as an international correspondent, reporting from Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Greece, Italy, and other parts of Europe and the Middle East. Her second book, Mirrors of Moscow, was published in 1923.

Her final years were marked by illness and personal collapse. She died in Sèvres, France, on January 6, 1936, at the age of fifty.

A life does not have to end cleanly to have mattered.

Bryant’s Village story remains inside a collection of addresses. A room at 43 Washington Square South. A magazine office at 91 Greenwich Avenue. A lunch table at 135 MacDougal Street. A stage at 139 MacDougal Street. Goldman’s apartment at 208 East 13th Street.

Some of these buildings survive. Others have been erased. The streets remain, holding the evidence of people who tried to live before permission caught up with them.

Preservation is not nostalgia. It is the refusal to let the city be edited until only the powerful remain.

Louise Bryant was not a footnote to John Reed. Her name belongs in the body of the page.

Explore Village Preservation’s Women’s Suffrage History Map to discover more of the people and places that carried the fight for equality through Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo.

The post Louise Bryant and the Unruly Freedom of Greenwich Village first appeared on Village Preservation.

Figure 1 – View of the Dapolito Recreation Center, c.1940 (NYC Municipal Archives)

The Tony Dapolito Recreation Center was included in the Greenwich Village Historic District Extension II that was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) on June 22, 2010, following a proposal and campaign by Village Preservation. In that designation, in addition to being noted for its historical importance, the building was highlighted for its architecture and plan. Those elements result in part from a profound change to the neighborhood that occurred with the extension of Seventh Avenue South in 1914-1917 that reshaped the built environment of the neighborhood from West 11^th Street to Varick Street.

Figure 2 – Map of GV HD Extension II, 2010 (NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission)

The site has a long and interesting history that includes ownership by such notable institutions as Trinity Church and individuals such as Aaron Burr. One of the most important changes to the block took place in 1895 as part of the city’s efforts to increase public space in the neighborhood. On the western section of what had been called St. John’s Park, then Hudson Park, and finally James J. Walker Park in 1947 in honor of the former Mayor, several buildings were added designed by the notable architectural firm of Carrère & Hastings, a firm that was responsible for the design of such notable  buildings as the main branch of the New York Public Library and the Frick Collection on Fifth Avenue. 

Figure 3 -Sanborn Map – Showing future site of the Dapolito Recreation Center, 1904 (The New York Public Library

In 1908, the eastern end of the park would see the construction of the Carmine Street Public Baths, part of a citywide effort to improve the health and living conditions of the city’s rapidly growing population, particularly in immigrant neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village.  Designed by the noted architectural firm of Renwick, Aspinwall & Tucker, the three-bay wide original plan for the building included the use of the Guastavino tile-arch system with a third floor gymnasium providing recreation space and washing facilities beneath. 

Figure 4 – View of the Dapolito Recreation Center, c.1908 (Prior to the extension of Seventh Avenue South)

The first notable change to the building would occur because of the extension of Seventh Avenue South in 1914-1917. The new layouts of the streets required the removal of the easternmost bay of the front elevation of the building.  In response to this new geometry, the city in 1922 completed an extension to the building designed by the architect Jaros Kraus, who was employed by the Department of Parks, that was in keeping with the overall architecture of the original design by Renwick, Aspinwall & Tucker.

Figure 5 – View of the Dapolito Recreation Center, c.1920’s (After the extension of Seventh Avenue South) (NYC Municipal Archives)

The second notable change to the building saw its footprint expanded to the side (west) with the construction in 1929 of a two-story addition designed by architect Mitchell Bernstein that included a distinctive rooftop pavilion. Changes to the interior included the addition of a swimming pool. The beloved outdoor pool directly west of the building, that would serve the community for decades was completed in 1931 through funding from the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Figure 6 – View of the Dapolito Recreation Center, 2019 (Google Street View)

The architecture of the Center includes a material palette of masonry (brick and limestone), with the brick laid in a Flemish Bond Pattern that adds to the visual interest of the façade, arched first floor windows with limestone keystones, second floor double-height windows, and denticulate cornice.  The distinctive corner roof pavilion has notable details including paired piers, and at the opposite end of the front elevation is located a tower with five sides, with an overall classical tri-partite composition.  Other notable architectural details include at the second floor the molded lintel that runs the length of the façade, only interrupted by keystones, all of which are expressed in limestone, and the chamfered corner on the west end of the primary elevation. 

While the building has seen some minor alterations over the years, including such items as replacement lighting, signage, painting of masonry (stone), and window replacement, it nevertheless retains a high level of architectural integrity. 

Figure 7 – G.W. Bromley & Co. Atlas of the Borough of Manhattan showing completed Public Bath (Future Dapolito Recreation Center), 1921 (The New York Public Library)

The Tony Dapolito Recreation Center is part of a grouping of civic buildings and spaces including the James J. Walker Park and the Hudson Park Branch Library. As noted in the designation report, these “were all located on the same block, functioning as a complex of complementary facilities that provided a significant amenity to the community.”  The preservation of these three pieces of civic design serves as a reminder of the importance of public spaces and their impact on a neighborhood.

To learn more about the history of the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center and buildings like it, read the Greenwich Village Historic District Extension II designation report, our original proposal for a South Village Historic District (which included this site and all of the Greenwich Village Historic District Extension, and the South Village State and National Registers of Historic Places report. 

To help ensure the preservation of the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center and its history, currently under threat, send messages to the a Mayor and Parks Commissioner calling for the building to be repaired and reopened HERE.

Exploring LGBTQ+ History at the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center – Village Preservation

Saving Tony Dapolito: A Landmark of Culture, Community, and Cinema in Jeopardy – Village Preservation

Tony Dapolito Rec Center Inspection Shows Historic Building Can Be Restored; City Finally Puts Forward Funding – Village Preservation

Buildings Sliced by Seventh Avenue South – Village Preservation

Seventh Avenue South’s Shifting Streetscape – Village Preservation

The post The Tony Dapolito Recreation Center – Architecture & Planning in the Greenwich Village Historic District first appeared on Village Preservation.

Held annually since 1993, close to Charlie Parker’s August 29 birthday, the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival brings together jazz veterans and newcomers for a three-day celebration of all things jazz. Honoring the late East Village resident and musical legend, the festival is free and open to the public, with performances taking place in two of Parker’s old stomping grounds: the East Village and Harlem. 

On Sunday, August 30th, day three of the festival will take place in Tompkins Square Park, where artists including Ravi Coltrane (the saxophonist son of John and Alice Coltrane) keep the spirit of our neighborhood’s jazz roots alive. You can learn more about the upcoming festival here. 

Charlie Parker, also known as “Bird” or “Yardbird,” was an alto saxophonist and towering figure in American jazz who was credited with popularizing the “bop” or “bebop” style of jazz in the 1940s. At the height of his success, Parker and his wife, dancer and jazz enthusiast Chan Richardson, moved to the ground floor of 151 Avenue B, just across the street from Tompkins Square Park. 

This building is an unusual example of a rowhouse in the Gothic Revival style, built circa 1849. The couple had two children while at this apartment: their daughter Pree in 1951, and son Baird in 1952. Parker’s time here was a stark departure from the itinerant lifestyle he had led during the preceding years. 

Richardson describes this period in their life as one of stability and maturity, saying: “(Charlie) had entered this phase of domestic stability and his children brought much joy to him. He dug Sunday’s best of all. I would cook a roast, and my mother, brother Jimmy, and Aunt Janet would come for Sunday dinner. It was all very middle class, except for our table, which we had made in the form of a G, or treble, clef. The indentation was the perfect spot for a high chair”

Jazz photographer and Parker fan Judy Rhodes purchased 151 Avenue B in 1979 and worked to upkeep and preserve the building. Her dedication to the history of the building led to the addition of the building to both NYC and national historic landmark lists, as well as the renaming of the block after Parker in 1992.

To learn more about the incredible jazz history of our neighborhoods, explore our Jazz Map. To learn about the history of every building in the East Village, head over to our East Village Building Blocks website.

The post Everlasting Sounds: Charlie Parker’s Musical Legacy in our Neighborhoods first appeared on Village Preservation.

One of the most remarkable and attractive historic districts in the country is one that has neither an official landmark designation nor the protection that comes with it: South of Union Square. If it lacks this designation, however, it has not been for lack of trying. Our proposal for the creation of an official historic district in this area has garnered support from the local community, scholars, local elected officials, and numerous groups with an interest in the histories that have converged in this neighborhood. Our proposed district was determined eligible for the State and National Registers of Historic Places and was named one of the Preservation League of New York State’s “Seven to Save” in 2022-2023. There are good reasons for this groundswell of support. Many of the movements and individuals who shaped the trajectory of our country operated out of this neighborhood. You can trace through it major developments in literary, publishing, dance, music, and art history, as well as in the civil rights, labor, Black, LGBTQ+, women’s suffrage, and women’s rights movements. You can learn more about these not only on our South of Union Square map, but also and in greater detail by searching our site for blogs and programs. 

Today, however, we want to focus on perhaps the most visible legacy in the neighborhood — its architecture. The area South of Union Square has one of the most outstanding collections of 19th and early 20th century buildings in the city, including some by renowned architects. Architectural photographer Dylan Chandler has captured some of the standout structures in the area. You can find his full collection here; but here are some of our favorites:

126-128 East 13th Street

This three-story Beaux Arts building was designed in 1903 by architects Jardine, Kent & Jardine as an auction mart for horses and then automobiles. The part of the building facing East 12th Street dates to 1890. During World War II, it housed a vocational school for women; and it subsequently was for decades the studio of noted artist Frank Stella. It was saved from planned demolition by Village Preservation after a six-year campaign to secure landmark designation for the building. In 2021, we placed a historic plaque at this address to honor Frank Stella’s legacy and the history of this building.

808 Broadway (Fourth Avenue facade) 

This striking six-story loft building, which runs the entire block from Broadway to Fourth Avenue north of Grace Church, was designed in 1887 by James Renwick, the noted architect of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Grace Church, along with partners James Lawrence Aspinwall and William Hamilton Russell. The design of the manufacturing building was meant to harmonize with the adjacent historic Grace Church. The building was home to notable publishers connected to the likes of Norman Rockwell. It was the scene of significant labor disputes, and it also played a pivotal role in Caleb Carr’s mystery novel The Alienist.

101-111 East 11th Street/93 Fourth Avenue

The two-story Cooper Station Post Office was designed by Louis A. Simon in 1936-37 for the Works Progress Administration in a Classical Revival/Moderne style. A number of Book Row sellers were housed in buildings previously located at this site.

42 East 12th Street

Cleverdon & Putzel designed this seven-story Romanesque Revival loft building in 1894. Its bays feature intact cast iron. In the late 19th century, the building served as a boarding house run by United Hebrew Charities. In the 1970s, it was home to the Film & Dance Theater and to the radical Workers Laboratory Theatre.

36 East 12th Street

This seven-story neo-Classical/Romanesque–style loft building was designed in 1894 by Cleverdon & Putzel for Philip Braender. It features richly detailed cast-iron work on the first two floors and intricate brick and stonework on the floors above. Since 1940, the ground floor has housed the family-owned business Seidenberg Antiques, one of the few businesses remaining from the days when this area was the antiques center of the country.

97 University Place 

This 10-story neo-Classical building was constructed in 1889 and designed by William C. Hazlett. For at least 60 years, it has housed the offices of the Textile Workers Union of America.

We hope this short survey inspires you to slow down and to look up and up close the next time you are walking south of Union Square. Your attention will be rewarded with countless architectural surprises. We also hope that the experience will move you to support our efforts to help protect the tremendous cultural and architectural legacy of this area, by calling on the City to declare this neighborhood a historic district. You can do so here, and learn more about the neighborhood, its rich history, and our efforts to preserve it here.

The post Looking Up and Up Close: The Architectural Treasures South of Union Square first appeared on Village Preservation.

Washington Square North

This image was one of many taken by Ricardo Spina during the February, 1978 Blizzard, one of the most destructive blizzards in American history. This Blizzard blanketed the Northeast, dumping 17.7 inches of snow on NYC, closing schools and bringing NYC to a standstill.

See the full Ricardo Spina Collection here.

The photo below is also from the Ricardo Spina Collection during the Blizzard looking down Jones Street towards Bleecker Street.

Fire and Ice: 34th Street Fire

The images below, also from the Ricardo Spina Collection, were taken in the aftermath of a winter fire on 34th Street.

See more images like this in the Ricardo Spina Collection here.

The Horsedrawn Snowplow

One of our favorites images, this photo of a horse-drawn snow plow in Washington Square Park was taken by Ruth E. Cushman in the 1930s. It is likely one of the last horse-drawn snowplows of Lower Manhattan, as work horses were almost complete phased out within the decade. Read more about the evolution of the NYC workshorse here,

See the Ruth Cushman Collection here, documenting the rapid change occurring throughout New York City in the early to mid-20th century.

1950s Washington Square Park

The images below are part of our Nat Kaufman Collection and show Washington Park in the midst of winter.

See more cool winter photos from our archive here by selecting the tag “winter” and clicking apply.

Our image archive highlights the history of the people and built environment of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo, and New York City in general. It has been assembled over the years through generous donations and consists of several dozen different collections.

Learn how you can help build these collections by donating images here.

And if you want to learn more about our 5,700-image, 75 collection-strong historic image archive, which turns 30 this year, attend a free webinar with Village Preservation Exec. Dir. Andrew Berman this Wednesday, August 26th at 6pm. He’ll take a deep dive into the archive, highlighting favorites, sharing backstories, and revealing mysteries both solved and unsolved. Register HERE.

The post Beat the August Heat: A Look Back at Our Chilliest Winter Archives first appeared on Village Preservation.

As you can imagine, its hard to sum up 6,000 images that range in date from the late 18th to the early 21st centuries, and come from scores of different sources, from celebrated professional photographers to private family collections, to photo-documentation taken over the years to memorialize then-current conditions, which now, years or decades later, represent important historic artifacts.

One of the most compelling types of images in the archive are of buildings which have since been lost. Here’s just a small sample of some of those demolished landmarks that can be found in our archive, many of which we’ll discuss and explore further on Wednesday night:

Explore our entire historic image archive HERE, and join us on Wednesday, August 26th at 6pm for our free webinar, “Thirty Years, 5,700 Pictures: A Guided Tour of Village Preservation’s Historic Image Archive with Andrew Berman.”

The post Lost Buildings Highlighted in 30 Years of Historic Image Archive first appeared on Village Preservation.

The corner of 14th Street and Sixth Avenue is a perfect example. On the two northern corners sit two relatively new buildings, 101 West 14th Street at the northwest corner, and another, inexplicably called “Forena,” at 540 Sixth Avenue, each seemingly competing for the prize of ugliest new eyesore in town. Both seem to peer into some dystopian future where architecture is designed by artificial intelligence, with prompts like “should stand out,” “look bold,” or “include dynamic architecture.” Unfortunately, a new addition coming just to its east at 31-35 West 14th Street looks to continue the trend, and possibly even up the stakes, with a design that looks like two completely different and unrelated ugly buildings sutured together in some botched architectural surgery.

The reality is this sad state of affairs is not an unavoidable reflection of our times, but a choice being made by developers, and one all New Yorkers will likely have to live with for the rest of our lives, and likely our children’s and their children’s. Because just across the street, on the southwest corner of 14th Street and Sixth Avenue, a new development called “The Village West” shows that handsome architecture that looks like it belongs, rather than a punishment imposed for the collective thought crimes of local residents, isn’t really rocket science to create, and can be done at the same scale as the ugly stuff.

Lest anyone think this is as simple as choosing historic materials and designs over “modern” ones (I’m not sure which school of modern architecture would want to claim these 14th Street oddities, and The Village West certainly references but nevertheless differs from classic models), there are notable exceptions to this rule of ugly new design in contemporary styles too. Village Preservation supported approval of the very contemporary design for 829 Greenwich Street (even arguing against later applications to destroy the original design), and we’ve had praise for contemporary designs like Nos. 25 and 10 Bond Street, the latter of which, like 829 Greenwich Street, had to gain approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission (unlike 25 Bond and all four buildings described previously on 14th Street).

Which is why the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s (LPC) recent decision to approve the design for 375 Lafayette Street, just around the corner from 10 and 25 Bond, is particularly disappointing. It’s clear that we can design and build in ways that contribute positively to our sense of place and relate well to historic surroundings — whether through references to classic styles and forms, or contemporary designs that capture the same qualities of proportion and rhythm and materiality that make buildings stand the test of time.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened here. Perhaps even more disappointingly, the LPC approved a revised version of the design, which was arguably worse than the first one (except in terms of improvements to the large rear and side secondary facades), which they required the applicant to work on and improve. We started with a design that was huge, overbearing, monotonous and dull, and arguably ended up with one that may have been even more so on its primary facades along Lafayette and Great Jones Streets.

The question is why, given that better was eminently possible. Let me first say that clearly this is all a matter of opinion, and as the old saying goes, one person’s meat can be another’s poison. Maybe this plodding design that looks like four disjointed pieces stacked next to and on top of one another will one day become a classic, beloved by architecture fans and average New Yorkers. Stranger things have happened, and I don’t own a crystal ball. But I do think we have a responsibility to do our best job to make what looks like good design now, and then let time and taste have its way with it.

Here however I believe what happened was the LPC ultimately abdicated their primary responsibility, which is to ensure the historic character of designated sites and districts are preserved, including in designs for new construction. This was a parking lot, so whether or not one could get approval to build something here was never in question. What was it what it should look like, and it seemed the LPC was uncomfortable standing up for and insisting upon good design that’s appropriate for its surroundings, and more concerned with the City’s desire to cite numbers of new housing units (even super expensive ones, as most of these will be, with the remainder termed “affordable” and yet most will paradoxicially be unaffordable for the majority of NYC renters whom they are supposed to house).

More directly, it seems there has been a push to be able to claim that the 2021 SoHo/NoHo rezoning is a success, even though it has already resulted in the destruction of multiple units of existing affordable housing, luxury commercial development where housing was promised, and super-luxury single-family mansions and residential developments with no even purportedly “affordable” housing whatsoever. Nearly halfway through the ten year period at the end of which the City promised nearly 2,000 units of housing would be built, including around 500 “affordable” ones, not a single unit of new housing, “affordable” or otherwise, has been built (even as the city has had record years for housing construction overall), though the above-mentioned plans for super-luxury housing which the City claimed would never happen here are in fact in-process (it should be noted that in the years before the rezoning, with the neighborhood’s old zoning which the city claimed made it impossible to build new housing, more than a dozen developments were built and approved). Read more about this HERE.

Anxious to change that narrative, it seems clear the directive came down from City Hall to the members of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, all of whom serve at the appointment of the Mayor, that numbers mattered more than anything, and that standing in the way of approval — even if it was due to the applicant failing to do the entirely possible, which was make a more sympathetic and appropriate design — was not an option (it should be noted that the two commissioners who voted against approval were not appointed by the current Mayor, and are considered unlikely to be reappointed by him).

The lesson here, looking at good new designs both inside and outside of landmarked areas, as well as bad ones, is that good new design is entirely possible, and in no way incompatible with modern and even large-scale new construction (though to be clear, scale matters, and a harmonious relationship to surroundings is key to good design). But all too often developers don’t prioritize it, and now we’re also seeing even our public agencies like the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which is supposed to staunchly defend it, will readily abandon it when other agendas take precedence.

But this doesn’t have to be a binary choice. Developers can make new buildings pencil out with good architecture. And the Landmarks Preservation Commission can ensure new housing is built in historic districts while standing firm in their insistence upon appropriate designs. Both big real estate and city government should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The question is, will they?

The post Why So Ugly? New Designs Don’t Have to Be So Bad, But Too Often Are first appeared on Village Preservation.