So Much For Letter Writing

Oh well, my lovely missive to Mr. Pei was totally beside the point. It turns out that because the community opposed NYU's plans to add a fourth tower to Mr. Pei's design, and he disagreed with the fourth tower, now they are going to punish us even worse, by razing our supermarket and building a much bulkier, bigger and uglier building right on the corner, right across from the only building that does not house NYU faculty.  This is the monstrosity they plan to erect in front of my windows:

 

They claim Pei's firm likes this plan better. If they do, they are blind and utterly insensitive to the people who live in the area. This is not a victory for the community. This is much worse than the proposed tower, which at least tried to be graceful and blend in with the existing layout and was not really closely obstructing anyone's view. No matter what the plan, the fact that NYU's insistence in building smack on the superblock is horrible.  Now we are going to have to put up with far more people, in an already crowded area, our lovely plaza is going to be deformed and overcrowded and where the hell are we going to go for overpriced groceries? Plus, Greenwich Village is going to look like downtown Detroit. But unfortunately NYU owns the land and they can do whatever they please. They can raze the Village and build their repulsive eyesores all over it as they have been doing for years. I hate that Philip Johnson library of theirs, which looks like a bunker. I hate the Skirball building across it. We already live in their campus. They tried to appease the community, which was fighting not to compromise on anything and this is the terrible result.

A Letter To I.M. Pei

Do you know what cranky New York alte cockers like me do? We write letters! I have been known to write to Mayor Bloomberg (rats, the demise of small businesses), to Chuck Schumer (universal healthcare), to American Airlines (a flight to Buenos Aires with not even a towelette), etc.
I wrote this one to distinguished architect I.M. Pei, the man who designed and built the place I live in:

Dear Mr. Pei:

I live in one of your Silver Towers. I have been enjoying my spacious and bright apartment here since 1992. As I’m sure you are aware, NYU is planning to build a 400-feet high hotel tower on the superblock site of your towers. This building will strongly affect what I think is your lasting legacy, which is the lovely harmony of the towers as they stand today, but most importantly, the open communal spirit of the plaza that anchors the towers.  I wish you could see what goes on on our plaza every day. Children play, elderly neighbors huddle together to catch the sun, people have lunch alfresco: it’s a wonderful public space, with an expansive sense of openess, a unique luxury in a city like New York. It is now being threatened by the forced inclusion of a fourth tower in an area that is already quite densely populated.   

So many of us live in the Silver Towers and yet the plaza is never too noisy or too busy. It’s an incredibly civilized urban space, where people come together. Bring in a hotel in the entrance to the plaza and part of the open and spacious spirit of the plaza would be lost.

Since NYU’s expansion plan began, I have been impressed by our community’s efforts to preserve the superblock as it is. It got landmark status, but this does not seem to deter NYU. I am an amateur lover of architecture and I know cities must change and new buildings must arise (as they did in 1960 when you built these towers). But I truly believe that squeezing in a fourth tower here would destroy the wonderful harmony of the space you designed and would impoverish the quality of life of its residents.

If you have any say in the matter, I respectfully urge you to consider the lives of the neighbors that are enriched day by day by the graceful and unique place we live in. This hotel can be built somewhere else.

Sincerely,

 

The Grande Enchilada.
(trying to do my part).

NYU's Grandiose Schemes

NYU is proposing to add 6 million square feet of new space across New York City in the next twenty years, with half the growth taking place in the historic blocks of the Village—the equivalent of three Javits Centers.

Let me translate: NYU plans to add 3 million square feet of construction to my neighborhood (a lot of it on my block) and apparently not much can be done to stop it. The recent landmark status accorded to the I.M. Pei superblock, where I live, has not been a deterrent. They want to build a 38-story new hotel tower on the site. They are going to build a 17-story building on Mercer Street facing the Angelika Film Center, where they intend to put, among other things, 1,400 freshmen. They are going to put two buildings in the beautiful and serene gardens of Washington Sq. Village.
John Sexton, the president of NYU, who confuses himself with Lorenzo de Medici in a bad way, has grandiose words to sell his vision. 

“The analogy that I use is to the Italian Renaissance, when there was Milan and Venice and Florence and Rome, and the talent and creative class moved among those points,”

As if. Yet he talks about the opposition as "demagogues" and "activists". But the opposition is actually mostly neighbors. It's the people who live in the buildings and on the streets where this monstrous expansion is slated to take place. Many of the faculty who live in the Pei towers and Washington Sq. Village are not jumping for joy either. It is not so much about preserving a bohemian and artistic character that, let's be frank, has been virtually lost. It's about NYU not engulfing everything on sight.
Of course the expansion plan is a boon for construction work and jobs and money for the city, which is why Bloomberg and the politicians don't oppose it. In New York City, preservation efforts are massively heroic and mostly doomed to failure. This is the only civilized city in the world where a gorgeous and important landmark like the original Penn Station was torn down, a city that would have torn down Grand Central Station if those pesky activists and demagogues had not fought to stop it. They had Jacqueline Onassis on their side. The neighbors who live in the Pei superblock (which I am not comparing to the train stations) don't have the glamorous power credentials. We are just people. Of the three Pei towers, two are faculty housing for NYU and the other one is a Mitchell-Lama Co-op where middle class people of all ages and races live. There are a lot of elderly residents. It is a community.  And it is a community of Greenwich Villagers.
The irony is that the Pei superblock was an offending eyesore in its day. Together with the Washington Square Village buildings across the street, an entire swath of quaint Greenwich Village was demolished to make way for its brutalist, modernist aesthetic, and at least in the case of my building, for middle income people to have affordable housing. I assume this must have been a concession the city asked of NYU in order to let them build. The buildings were hated in their day (1960), but time has proven them to have been executed with a certain grace, and they provided enduring public spaces for community life. As happens with buildings of a certain age, now they have a retro feel that people are actually fond of and they are architecturally significant (I guess the Pei more than the Washington Sq. Village, but I happen to love the blocky sixties architecture and their peaceful inner courtyards).
I'm not opposed to progress. Cities change. The village is a pathetic shadow of what it used to be. But it should not become NYU. What I like about the Village is that it is full of lively and engaged people who are putting up a fight.

The little people