The Trouble with Eighth Street
Bohemian Eight Street has seen better days. (AN/Stoelker)
In his poem “One Winter Afternoon,” e.e. cummings describes Eighth Street in Greenwich Village at the “magical hour when is becomes if.” Well, it seems as though Eighth Street has reached that hour once again. The street, which once played a distinct role in Village bohemia, began as a hub for book dealers and fostered the original Whitney Museum. Eventually, the street became a district for shoe stores and edgy fashion anchored by Patricia Field. Field decamped for the Bowery about nine years ago and much of the street has since devolved into a hodgepodge of chain stores and characterless low-end retail.
Center for Architecture Grows in the Village
New York's Center for Architecture just signed a lease to expand next door. (AN/Stoelker)
With all the NYU real estate hubbub going on around LaGuardia Place in Greenwich Village, it’s refreshing to hear of a quiet transaction between two locals. This week, the AIANY signed the lease for 532 LaGuardia, an empty retail space owned by local lumber magnate Guy Apicella just one door south of the AIANY’s current home, the Center for Architecture at 536 LaGuardia.
Galloping Gallatin: NYU Exhibition is Out There
The exhibit "Global Design: Elsewhere Envisioned" at NYU's Gallatin through June 25. (Julie Iovine/AN)
It happened suddenly, as if out of nowhere: NYU’s Gallatin opened Global Design/Elsewhere Envisioned, an exhibition that comes with two symposia, is described as an initiative, and some hope might just morph into a new school of architecture.
NYU Takes Expansion Plans Off-Campus
NYU outlines off-campus expansion plans. (Courtesy Curbed)
Sustained resistance from their Village neighbors has not thwarted NYU’s 2031 expansion plans; they’ve just looked to other neighborhoods. The university has leased 120,000 square feet at Brooklyn’s MetroTech Center and also retained Kohn Pederson Fox to design a 170,000-square-foot campus on their hospital grounds along First Avenue. This is not to say that they’ve abandoned expansion plans in the Village or wooing the neighbors. A storefront gallery space called NYU Open House designed by James Sanders & Associates invites the public in to view new 3-D models of revamped plans for the Silver Towers and Washington Square Village.
The Straw That Broke the Silver Towers' Back
The proposed fourth tower at NYU is being reconsidered. (Rendering courtesy Grimshaw and MVVA)
I.M. Pei speaks and NYU listens. The university announced this week that plans for a Grimshaw-designed residential highrise planned for Pei’s landmarked Silver Towers block will be scrapped after the architect expressed disapproval over the project. The proposed 400-foot tower set amid three original concrete structures had been a point of conflict between NYU and its neighbors.
Wilf Hall Not Bad By NYU Standards
Wilf Hall (Courtesy Archidose)
Yesterday, John Hill, arguably the city’s most prolific architecture critic, finished up one of his latest projects, entitled “31 in 31.” In addition to his usual flood of posts, Hill is chronicling one building every day in August, in preparation for a new guide book. The buildings are scattershot, ranging from the new Crocs super store in the West Village to One Bryant Park, but most of them are new and, in a way Hill always seems to manage, representative of precisely what has been going on in the city recently—not comprehensive, but authoritative. It’s a rundown worth running down, but one building in particular caught our eye: the rather unassuming Wilf Hall at NYU. Read More
NYU Destroys Again
The damage down: At least two holes can be seen in the "shell" of the old theater from this August 3rd picture. Click to enlarge. (Courtesy GVSHP)
Curbed directed us to a travesty in the Village today, albeit an unsurprising one. It appears NYU, in constructing a new building for the law school, damaged the shell of the Provincetown Playhouse, which it had promised to preserve. We say this is unsurprising because, as we recall and Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation again confirmed, this is precisely what preservationists feared would happen. Read More
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