By Kim Velsey 5/23 12:06am

Grave Developments

Mary Help of Christians Church on Avenue A was built over an old cemetery.

Building On a Boneyard? Preservationists Beg Steiner Not To Put Luxury Condos On Former Cemetery Site

The dead may not literally walk among us, but they can certainly cause headaches for developers. In 2006, work on Trump Soho was temporarily halted when human remains were discovered at the construction site, where a Baptist Church once stood. Last year, plans for a development in Queens were nixed after the property—home to a colonial-era cemetery—was landmarked. And back in 1991, the federal government was forced to significantly alter plans for its $276 million federal office tower in Lower Manhattan after uncovering the 17th and 18th-century remains of hundreds of African Americans.

Now, several preservation and community groups are pleading with developer Douglast Steiner to his abandon plans to demolish the Mary Help of Christians Church complex at 181 Avenue A (between East 11th and East 12th streets), because the buildings were built over a former Catholic Cemetery. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/07 3:35pm

Purple People Eaters

You'd never guess it, but Vanderbilt Hall was actually build in the '50s.

You Win Some, You Lose Some: NYU Checked in South Village, Approved for Expansion in NoHo

If you thought that the war over New York University’s expansion in and around the Greenwich Village was over, think again: the university’s banner “NYU 2031″ plan to add infill buildings to its superblock may be over (okay, well, almost over), but skirmishes continue on the periphery, and two battles that broke out over the past week showing no sign of abating.

The first battle involved the new South Village historic district, which preservationists wanted to go hand-in-hand with  the Hudson Square rezoning. Preservationists claimed that the rezoning, in addition to endowing property owners with millions of square feet of residential development rights in exchange for ensuring that nothing like the Trump SoHo would ever happen again, would imperil the unprotected historic neighborhood next door. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/30 5:31pm

What's Old Is New Again

The Trump SoHo: a modern "apartment hotel" with a condo twist.

From the Ansonia to the Trump SoHo: A History of Rule-Bending Residential Hotels

The Trump SoHo, the lone protrusion in an otherwise mid-rise Hudson Square, is one of the most controversial buildings in lower Manhattan—so controversial, in fact, that it helped inspire the neighborhood’s recently-passed rezoning. Built in an industrial and commercial zone, the tower styles itself as a “condo hotel” under a loophole worked out by the Bloomberg administration. While marketed as a condo building, buyers are technically not allowed to stay in their rooms for more than 120 days out of the year, or for more than 29 days out of any 36-day period.

But, as Andrew Berman at the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation pointed out to The Observer, these restrictions are basically unenforceable (the Department of Buildings’s press office didn’t know offhand if anyone’s ever gotten in trouble for violating these provisions, or if they’re even responsible for enforcement), and now Mr. Berman has noticed something strange: the city’s own tax lot data codes the property as ”mixed residential and commercial buildings”—apparently a contravention of the zoning code. Read More

By Kim Velsey 6:23pm

In the Rezone

Hudson Square

It’s Official! Hudson Square Has Been Rezoned

This afternoon, the City Council voted to approve the Hudson Square rezoning. The rezoning—a plan five years in the making that allows for the creation of a denser, mixed-use district with significantly more residential and retail development—is now in effect. Bordered by Tribeca and Soho, there’s little doubt what the rezoning will mean for Hudson Square’s future. Behold New York’s next hot neighborhood.

Full Council approval was largely a formality after the Council’s land use and zoning and franchise committees voted to approve the plan last week, but it was significant: the last step in a lengthy approval process that will transform a neighborhood currently characterized by old printing plants and quiet sidewalks. Read More

By Kim Velsey 1/31 2:00pm

In the Rezone

What will it mean for development in the South Village? (Trinity Real Estate)

Should Hudson Square’s Rezoning Have to Wait for the Designation of a Historic District?

There is no doubt that the Hudson Square rezoning, if and when it is approved, will reshape what is arguably the last remaining swath of downtown Manhattan’s formerly industrial landscape. Preservationists, however, are not concerned with the fate of the neighborhood’s old printing plants, but rather, that of the quaint district that borders Hudson Square to the northeast.

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation claims that development and demolition plans in the as-yet unlandmarked South Village—a chunk of Soho bounded by West 4th to the north, Sixth Avenue to the west, West Broadway to the east and Watts Street to the South—have been speeding up as the rezoning moves through the approval process. Read More

By Kim Velsey 10/09/12 10:04am

And then there were condos

5 Photos

186 Spring Street

Does New York City Need a Gay Rights Landmark?

For a brief moment in the late summer, it seemed possible, if not probable, that the red brick row house at 186 Spring Street might become the first gay rights landmark in the city to be officially recognized by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Soho rowhouse sheltered a number of prominent gay rights activists, among them Bruce Voeller (who was a leader in the fight against AIDS), Arnie Kantrowitz and Jim Owles, who was the president of the Gay Activists Alliance at the time he lived there, an influential organization that emerged in the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots. Until the spring, it belonged to another notable New Yorker, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz.

But on a rainy morning last week, the building was surrounded by neither city officials nor map-clutching tourists, but by a demolition crew tasked with tearing it down to make way for a seven-story luxury condo. Read More

By Kim Velsey 9/18/12 1:48pm

Making History

Will the LPC reconsider? (GVSHP)

Beastie Boy’s Townhouse and Gay Rights Landmark Eligible For Historic Register, But That Won’t Save It From the Wrecking Ball

Historic preservationists and gay rights activists have won a skirmish in their campaign to save 186 Spring Street, a SoHo townhouse that sheltered a number of gay rights activists in the post-Stonewall era—earning landmark designation eligibility from the state and national historic registers. But without a designation from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, the house’s demolition still looms as the most likely possibility.

Earning a spot on the State and National registers would be a coup for the preservationists. “It’s truly historic—only one other place in the United States has been placed on the state and national registers in relation to gay and lesbian history,” said Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. The other place, also in Manhattan, is the Stonewall Inn. Read More

By Kim Velsey 7/11/12 11:19am

Making History

The buyer of Horovitz's old house is seeking a license to tear down. (Kevin Mazur/WireImage)

Beastie Boy’s Former SoHo Townhouse Faces Demolition

Seller beware! In April, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz sold his SoHo townhouse to a Canadian developer, who claimed he wanted it for “personal use.”

Now The Village Voice is reporting that the new owner, Stephane Boivin, is seeking permission to demolish the property.Which doesn’t come as a huge surprise given that Mr. Boivin is planning a seven-story, mixed-use property adjacent to the Beastie abode, plus he already owns several other properties in the city. Read More

By Matt Chaban 3/27/12 5:07pm

It Takes a Village

A colossal campus. (NYU)

Everybody and Their Brother Wants Scott Stringer to Oppose the NYU Expansion

The chorus of opposition to NYU’s expansion plan grows louder. (It’s not just the dogs and the neighbors anymore.) Forty-four different community leaders, politicians, preservationists and neighborhood groups have written a letter to Borough President Scott Stringer urging him to vote down the university’s ambitious, outsized project to build four new towers a few blocks south of Washington Square Park.

“We believe that the zoning changes, lifting of urban renewal deed restriction and taking of public open space requested by NYU is wrong in principle, and the developments which would follow from it would have a terribly detrimental impact,” the letter reads. “We believe that there are better alternatives to be consider by the University and the city.” Read More