Translation from English

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

More Landmarks of Architecture: Old School Village relatively high rise apartment buildings... And Landmarks and Preservation in the Village

Old high rise apartment building at Greenwich Avenue and Christopher Street is one of a limited number of such buildings in the Village...most of the old ones are pretty good as far as architecture goes...for instance, the Deco building at 59 West 12th Street

(NOTE: This may be a bit of a distraction, but I looked up 59 West 12th and found it was done by Emery Roth for Bing and Bing in 1931-- Roth being the same firm that did the classic apartment buildings on Central Park West like the Beresford ( which I just did a posting on not so long ago here), the San Remo,  and the Eldorado..Bing and Bing and Roth also being involved with some other notable higher rise buildings in   Greenwich Village)...

It became a condo in the 1980's and has been home to numerous celebrities including Jimi Hendrix, Isaac Mizrahi and others --see Wikipedia for the whole story...

City Planning and Preservation-- Greenwich Village as a pioneering area:

 I gather that Greenwich Village has long had a lot of people interested in preserving its landmarks and somehow limiting growth there, especially when it comes to high rise buildings..

I know by the 1970's the Village was known as a place architects hated because the local Board would tell people what kind of windows they could use, especially if they were doing something with a building that was on some sort of register.

Let me see what I can find about Landmarks and Preservation efforts in the Village...well, this organization dates from 1980, but believe me, the drive to preserve landmarks etc. had been going on for a long time before that!!!

In fact, on researching something else I found reference to a register that had already been put together and work done by a Princeton student in about 1970 which he published as a book...

Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
GVSHP Logo.jpg
Formation 1980
Headquarters New York, NY
Website
http://www.gvshp.org/
The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) is a non-profit organization that seeks to preserve the architectural heritage and cultural history of several neighborhoods of New York City: Greenwich Village, the East Village, the Far West Village, the South Village, Gansevoort Market, and NoHo. Since 1999, GVSHP has operated from the Neighborhood Preservation Center, the former rectory of St. Mark’s Church, on East 11th Street, and it is considered one of the premier advocacy groups in the city.

In recent years, GVSHP has received numerous honors and mentions in preservation and real estate circles,[1] from the Preservation League of New York State's Excellence in Historic Preservation Award for organizational excellence in 2007,[2] to Executive Director Andrew Berman's inclusion in the The New York Observer's "The 100 Most Powerful People in New York Real Estate" in 2008.[3]
GVSHP's current roster of projects includes educational outreach in the form of public lectures, tours, exhibitions, and publications; a school program that teaches children about Greenwich Village history and architecture; preservation leadership on such issues as preservation of the South Village; preservation projects that promote an understanding of the Village’s historic importance, such as the Greenwich Village Preservation Archive and Oral History Project; consultation services on a wide variety of preservation issues, with GVSHP serving the community as historian, educator, archival resource, and technical consultant.[4]

GVSHP also publishes "The Anthemion," a biannual newsletter detailing the status of its advocacy projects.[5]

History and past projects


GVSHP is currently operating from the Neighborhood Preservation, an incubator for historic preservation advocacy groups.
GVSHP was founded in 1980 as the Greenwich Village Trust for Historic Preservation (GVT). In 1982, Regina Kellerman, a prominent architectural historian and co-founder of GVT, was named as its first executive director, and GVT moved its operations to the Salmagundi Club at 47 Fifth Avenue. In 1984, GVT changed its name to the current one, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.

Throughout the 1980s, GVSHP initiated research on the history and architecture of Greenwich Village, including subjects like the Gansevoort Meat Market (a joint study with Columbia University), Bleecker Street, Broadway, and maritime history of the Greenwich Village waterfront.
In 1991, GVSHP launched its first educational program, “Greenwich Village: History and Historic Preservation,” as a joint effort with the Merchant's House Museum, and, in 1995, designed and published a 12-page children’s workbook, “Discovering Greenwich Village,” for distribution to children in the school program.[6] The education program has since been expanded to include field-trip style walking tours of Greenwich Village, encouraging students to examine the architectural form of Greenwich Village as a manifestation of its social history and context.[7]

In the mid-1990s, GVSHP initiated an oral history project to document the experiences of Village preservationists of the twentieth century, many of whom were involved in defeating Robert Moses's Lower Manhattan Expressway. The participants in the oral history project include famous Village residents such as Jane Jacobs, Edwin Fancher, and Doris Diether.[8]

Landmarks designation efforts

Although a large portion of the Village was designated in 1969 as part of the Greenwich Village Historic District, many buildings outside of the district’s boundaries do not have landmark status conferred upon them. In the past few years, GVSHP has led successful campaigns to designate much of the area as landmarks or new historic districts. [6]

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2006

2005

2004

2003

1999

Recent honors and awards

2008

GVSHP’s Executive Director Andrew Berman was recognized by the Observer in 2008 for work in standing up to overdevelopment within Greenwich Village and its environs. Among the list of real estate developers, financiers, brokers, and government officials, Berman was the only neighborhood preservation advocate chosen to make the list of the “100 Most Powerful People in Real Estate.”

2007

  • The Preservation League of New York State's Excellence in Historic Preservation Award
Of GVSHP, PLNYS said, “The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation’s efforts to build grassroots support, and to monitor and inform the decisions of New York City agencies should serve as an inspiration to other preservation organizations. GVSHP recently achieved a number of preservation goals that for decades had proved elusive. From the implementation of measures to protect the historic buildings and character of the Far West Village and Greenwich Village waterfront, to the designation of the Gansevoort Market Historic District, once-endangered buildings are now protected.”

2006

  • The Village Voice's “Best Greenwich Village Defender” in “Best of NYC 2006”
The Village Voice writes that “It’s been a big year in the push to preserve the Village, thanks largely to the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. The group’s vigilant director, Andrew Berman, has exhibited a knack for stopping 'out of context' buildings from sprouting up on quaint, historic streets, despite the red-hot development pressures."
New York Magazine says of Berman, "He persuaded the City Council to stop a spate of 'out of context' buildings in their tracks. Now he’s taking on NYU, determined not to let the university take over the neighborhood in its expansion.”
The NYLC established the Lucy G. Moses award to "recognize the property owners, builders, artisans, and designers who renew the beauty and utility of New York City’s distinctive architecture."

Current projects


A map of the boundaries for the proposed South Village Historic District.
GVSHP lists the following areas and buildings among those for which it seeks to obtain landmarks status:[9]

Historic districts

These are the designated historic districts that fall within GVSHP's purview, followed by the year in which they were designated in parentheses:

See also


 
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please leave a comment-- or suggestions, particularly of topics and places you'd like to see covered

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)