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Preservation
Debate on Greenwich Street
by Ronald Drenger
They are so easy to overlook, these rare architectural specimens.
They are not monumental structures or great works by legendary architects.
They were not the sites of famous historical events.
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But four small houses on Greenwich Street south of the World Trade
Center site—numbers 67, 94, 941/2 and 96—have withstood
almost 200 years of Downtown development, providing glimpses of
lost streetscapes and bygone eras.
Can they now withstand the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan?
The New York Landmarks Conservancy and the Greenwich Village Society
for Historic Preservation are campaigning for these four buildings,
along with nine other Federal era row houses in the Village, to
be designated as city landmarks. The designation would give them
significant protection from demolition.
“These buildings are venerable and vulnerable survivors,”
said Roger Lang, director of community
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programs and services at the
New York Landmarks Conservancy. “They are important reminders
of the past.”
The Greenwich Street buildings are particularly vulnerable, preservationists
say. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC), which is
overseeing the rebuilding of Downtown, is preparing to launch an urban-design
study of the neighborhood south of the Trade Center site that will
provide the framework for the area’s redevelopment.
Mayor Bloomberg has said that he wants to create a residential neighborhood
there, with a sprawling new park on a deck to be built over the entrance
to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.
“Realistically, if the city and the LMDC want new housing,
the row at 94 to 96 would be a perfect site if you knocked
them down,” said Ken Lustbader, a consultant for the
Lower Manhattan Emergency Preservation Fund, a coalition of
five preservation groups, including the Landmarks Conservancy.
“And 67, just a stone’s throw from the tunnel,
where the new park will go, is clearly a vulnerable site.”
Indeed, the owner of 67 Greenwich Street is seeking to tear
down her building and put up a 22-story apartment tower. (See
story on page 6.)
The Preservation Fund, created after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks, was planning to present the LMDC this month with
a report on the significance of about 50 non-landmarked buildings
in the area, including the four row houses, that it says are
threatened.
“We’re not saying that every single one should be
landmarked, but we’re saying, keep these buildings in
mind and think about historic preservation as a potential
asset in the rebuilding process,” Lustbader said.
The Greenwich Street houses should definitely be saved, the
preservationists say. No. 67, at the corner of tiny Edgar Street,
half a block north of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel entrance,
was built around 1810, when Greenwich Street was the place to
live for the city’s wealthy movers and shakers. Robert
Dickey, a merchant, was the original owner of this four-story
mansion, which has splayed lintels with |
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raised keystones over four front windows—an unusual architectural
feature—and several oval rooms that produce a bowed rear facade—one
of the last surviving in the city.
The building was divided into apartments in the mid-1800s, and its
slanted roof with dormer windows was replaced by a full fourth floor.
Similar mansions to its south side were demolished in the 1940s for
the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.
The building is now vacant, its interior in shambles and its ground-floor
storefronts shuttered.
One block north, at the corner of Rector Street, nos. 94 to 96 also
date to the early 19th century, forming a rare row of three connected
Federal era houses. The buildings have much of their original detail,
including the window lintels and sills, though the ground-floor signs
for a deli, a pizza place and the Pussycat Lounge distract from the
facades. Here, too, as was common, a full fourth floor was added,
but the slope of the original roof is still visible on the south side
of No. 94.
The owner of 96 Greenwich Street said he favored landmarking his building.
The owners of 94 and 941/2 could not be reached.
As part of its effort to draw attention to important old buildings
downtown, the Preservation Fund last month sponsored a walking tour
of the neighborhood south of the Trade Center.
For its first stop, the tour leader, Francis Morrone, an architectural
historian, brought the group to 67 Greenwich Street, which he acknowledged
was in “a rather forlorn state.”
“It doesn’t really strike you as having been one of the
great mansions of New York City,” Morrone said. But, he added,
“In spite of the grime, the peeling paint, the gates on the windows,
this house, were it to be spruced up, could be made to shine.”
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