Robert Minturn (1805-1866) was a partner in the renowned transatlantic shipping firm Grinnell, Minturn & Co.. In 1847, he completed his mansion at 60 Fifth Avenue, and moved here with his wife Anna Mary Wendell. The building (now demolished) was part of the newly fashionable lower Fifth Avenue which just a few years earlier Henry Brevoort had turned into New York’s premier address with the construction of his mansion. At 60 Fifth Avenue, Minturn hosted gatherings for businessmen, politicians, and other powerful figures. Following a trip to Europe in 1848-1849, Anna and Robert were inspired to develop a park in New York City, and shared their ideas with their network. Apparently, the Minturns even donated land to advance the project of building Central Park. Robert Minturn is also well known for his opposition to slavery, and is said to have purchased enslaved people in order to set them free. He built an apartment house for African American families in today’s Chinatown.

The present building on this site was built in 1923-24 to serve the American branch of the prominent British publishing house Macmillan Publishing Company. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The Lenox Library was the product of eccentric Gilded Age millionaire James Lenox. His father Robert, a Scottish immigrant, became one of the most successful real estate investors and developers in New York City in the early 19th century and one of its richest men. When he died in 1839, James inherited the family business, as well as 300 acres of property on today’s Upper East Side (the neighborhood now known as Lenox Hill). But by 1845, James Lenox was done with business and retired to pursue his passions of book collecting and building an unrivaled home for himself.

Lenox Mansion at 55 Fifth Avenue (now demolished) He succeeded wildly in both endeavors. Lenox quickly amassed one of the largest book collections in the country, with a special emphasis on rare books, Americana, and an unsurpassed collection of bibles, including the only Guttenberg Bible in America. Starting in 1846, he also built one of the largest and most impressive homes in 19th-century New York, what came to be known as the Lenox Mansion, on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue at 12th Street. It was located diagonally across from the First Presbyterian Church to which the deeply religious Lenox was extremely dedicated. It was furthermore part of the newly fashionable lower Fifth Avenue which just a few years earlier Henry Brevoort had turned into New York’s premier address with the construction of his mansion. Lenox’s two passions came together when he turned his home into a repository for his ever-growing book collection. The library was, however, kept private, with only the notoriously reclusive Lenox knowing how the books were ordered and where they were kept. Visitors seeking to access the world-renowned private library – which included among other prized items George Washington’s farewell address, all known editions of Milton’s Paradise Lost, and several first editions of Shakespeare’s plays – were typically rebuffed. The rare exception was when New York’s chief Judge Charles P. Daly wished to see a book of which Lenox owned the only known copy in the country; Lenox had it sent to Daly with a servant, who was instructed to wait with it and the judge until he was done reading, and then immediately return with it.

James Lenox, 1870 Lenox was eventually convinced to move his extraordinary book collection to a location where it could be accessed, albeit on a limited basis, by the public. In 1877, his Lenox Library opened in a sumptuous Neo-Grec-style structure occupying the full blockfront of Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71st Streets facing Central Park, designed by one of the 19th century’s most renowned architects, Richard Morris Hunt. Located in the middle of Lenox’s 300 acres, the building was one of Gilded Age New York’s most striking landmarks. Housing 85,000 items, the library and its galleries were a must-see for scholars and elites, who had to apply or pay for admission. Lenox died in 1880 just after his library opened, and its finances immediately began to suffer. With the Astor Library facing similar challenges and the newly-established Tilden Trust ready to fund a public library, the three merged in 1895. The Lenox Library at 70th Street remained in operation until the new main branch of the NYPL opened on 42nd Street in 1911, and all its books were transferred there. Lenox’s imposing Upper East Side landmark was demolished in 1912, just 35 years after it opened, replaced by Henry Clay Frick’s mansion, now the Frick Museum. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded in November 1874 in Cleveland, Ohio. After Frances Willard took over leadership in 1879, the WCTU became the largest and one of the most influential women’s groups in the country, expanding its platform from abstinence from alcohol and leading a ‘moderate’ and moral Christian lifestyle to campaign for labor laws, prison reform, and women’s suffrage. Concomitantly, the alcohol industry became a strong funder and supporter of the anti-women’s suffrage cause. The WCTU’s entry into the women’s suffrage effort around 1880 allowed many more traditional women and men, who might have felt alienated by the more radically feminist platform of many suffragists, to feel comfortable supporting the cause.

Frances Willard, 1890-1898 It was during the time period that the National WCTU was heavily involved in the women’s suffrage movement and other progressive social causes that it had its headquarters located at 16 East 14th Street (demolished). Prominent leaders of the WCTU including Willard, Caroline Brown (C.B.) Buell and Frances J. Barnes worked out of the 14th Street office on the women’s suffrage and other campaigns. Today the WCTU is the oldest voluntary, non-sectarian woman’s organization in continuous existence in the world. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

A no longer extant building on this site was the first home of the New York Foundling Hospital.

The New York Foundling is one of New York City’s oldest and largest child welfare agencies. Founded in 1869 to save the lives of babies being abandoned on the streets of New York, the Foundling currently serves over 30,000 people each year in New York City, Rockland County, and Puerto Rico. Its comprehensive community programs serve vulnerable children and families with foster care, adoption, education, mental health, and many other community-based services. In the late 1860s, there was an epidemic of infanticide and child abandonment in New York City. The Sisters of St. Peter’s Convent downtown on Barclay Street regularly found abandoned babies on their doorstep. Sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbon of St. Peter’s approached Mother Mary Jerome, the Superior of the Sisters of Charity, regarding the need to rescue these children. Archbishop (later Cardinal) John McCloskey urged the Sisters to open an asylum for such children. On October 11, 1869, three Sisters of Charity – Sisters Irene, Sister Teresa Vincent, and Ann Aloysia – opened The New York Foundling Asylum of the Sisters of Charity. They received one infant on their first night of operation. Forty-five more babies followed in that first month. To meet overwhelming demand, Foundling opened a boarding department in November and began placing children under the care of neighbors. Seventy-seven more babies followed in the next two months. The New York Foundling Asylum of the Sisters of Charity first opened on October 11, 1869 in a Greek Revival row house located at 17 East 12th Street, between Fifth Avenue and University Place. This building was demolished prior to 1929 when a 12-story parking garage (since converted to an apartment building) was built on the site.

Sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbon In the late 1860s, there was an epidemic of infanticide and child abandonment in New York City. The Sisters of St. Peter’s Convent downtown on Barclay Street regularly found abandoned babies on their doorstep. Sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbon of St. Peter’s approached Mother Mary Jerome, the Superior of the Sisters of Charity, regarding the need to rescue these children. Archbishop (later Cardinal) John McCloskey urged the Sisters to open an asylum for such children.

Sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbon with Children, 1888 On October 11, 1869, three Sisters of Charity – Sisters Irene, Sister Teresa Vincent, and Ann Aloysia – opened The New York Foundling Asylum of the Sisters of Charity. They received one infant on their first night of operation. Forty-five more babies followed in that first month. To meet overwhelming demand, Foundling opened a boarding department in November and began placing children under the care of neighbors. Seventy-seven more babies followed in the next two months. The New York Foundling Asylum of the Sisters of Charity first opened on October 11, 1869 in a Greek Revival row house located at 17 East 12th Street, between Fifth Avenue and University Place. This building was demolished prior to 1929 when a 12-story parking garage (since converted to an apartment building) was built on the site. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

100 University Place was until 2015 the home of the original Bowlmor Lanes, the first bowling alley in what eventually became a chain of upscale bowling alleys that transformed the sport from a downscale pastime to a pricey entertainment experience. The original Bowlmor was opened here in 1938 by Nick Gianos, at the start of what is sometimes called the Golden Age of bowling, the 1940s through the 1960s, when the introduction of the automatic pinsetter raised bowling's popularity, accessibility, and profitability. Bowlmor Lanes was one of the most prominent bowling venues in America, hosting the prestigious Landgraf Tournament in 1942 and one of the first televised bowling tournaments, the East vs. West, broadcast on New York City radio station WOR in 1954. Vice President Richard Nixon bowled here in 1958. Even through the 1970s and 80s, Bowlmor continued to attract top bowlers in the sport. Nick Gaino’s son took over the business in the 1980s, and faced with rising rents came up with a new model to make bowling a upscale experience with chic retro designs and more expensive food and drink amenities, geared more towards those seeking an entertainment or social experience than traditional bowlers. The model was incredibly successful, and ended up being replicated throughout the country.

However it was not enough to prevent the building from being sold for development and demolished, replaced by the 21 story condo tower there today. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The famous Cedar Tavern was the number one hangout for New York School artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Franz Kline, just to name a few. They gathered here at least every other night to drink, socialize, and discuss art. In fact, it is often said that it was here that Abstract Expressionism was born and bred.

Jackson Pollock The tavern changed locations several times, but in 1945 it moved to 24 University Place, where it experienced its heyday. Pollock and the like were fond of the Cedar for its cheap drinks (15 cents a beer, to be exact) and its unpretentious location on then off-the-beaten-track University Place. Long after its prime, the Cedar Tavern moved to a now-much-altered building at 82 University Place. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

New York Society Library at 67 University Place, later 109 University Place, 1893 Founded in 1754, New York City’s oldest library is the New York Society Library. Still a private library to this day, it has a storied history that crosses four centuries and includes a full lifetime – 81 years – in Greenwich Village. For part of this time, the New York Society Library was located in a now-demolished building at 109 University Place. In 1754, there was no library in New York. But six individuals came together in that year to create a library which “would be very useful as well as ornamental to the City.” The setup: anyone could join, and joining gave one the ability to check out a broad range of books, or enjoy books on-site. Books included fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and reference books. The library originally occupied one room in the old City Hall at 26 Wall Street, which eventually came to be known as Federal Hall after George Washington’s inauguration there in 1789. It was called “the City Library” until the New York Public Library was founded in 1895. In 1795, with a catalog of 5,000 books, the NY Society Library finally moved out of Federal Hall to 33 Nassau Street, where it hosted the likes of Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. In 1840 the Society moved to Leonard Street and Broadway, where Henry David Thoreau and John James Audubon were members. In that space, they combined with the New York Athenaeum, a literary and scientific club of the day. As the library’s collection increased to thirty-five thousand volumes by 1856, it became necessary to build a larger building.

New York Society Library, 109 University Place, post-1933 And so in 1856, the New York Library Society moved to Greenwich Village. It built and took up residence in a beautiful building located at 67 University Place between 12th and 13th Streets. The street numbers were changed in 1895, and 67 University Place became 109 University Place. Here the library remained for eighty-one years, until 1937.

In 1937, the library moved out and uptown again, to its current location. Sadly, their magnificent building on University Place was demolished, and in 1940 was replaced with the Art Deco apartment building found there today. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The Domestic Sewing Machine Company Building previously occupied the lot at the southwest corner of Broadway and 14th Street. The building, designed by Griffith Thomas, was everything you could ask for in one that fronted bustling Union Square: ornate, tall (for its time), and capped with an eye-catching cupola and “DOMESTIC” sign at the rooftop. At the time of its 1873 construction, it was hailed as an early skyscraper, the tallest cast-iron building yet built. It’s hard to imagine a seven-story building as a skyscraper nowadays, but in the late 19th century it certainly was. The Domestic Sewing Machine Company showcased its sewing machines on the first floor, which you can see in the print above. Its corporate headquarters were on the upper floors.

According to The American Skyscraper: 1850-1940, “The Domestic’s first floor was wrapped in glass – large windows allowed for natural light to penetrate deeply into the showrooms. The company’s street floor displayed the various sewing machine types, paper dress patterns, and models sporting the latest fashions – all garments of course capable of manufacture by a Domestic machine” (pg. 52).

The building was demolished in 1927 for the building we see today. With the Ladies’ Mile district beginning on the north side of the park, the Domestic Sewing Machine Company Building would have been a striking gateway to Broadway south of 14th Street. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Though connected to U.S. Presidents, great American writers, inventors, actors, entertainers, artists, and agitators, and originally designed by one of America’s premiere 19th century architects, in 2019 the city allowed the more than 165 year old former St. Denis Hotel to be demolished, in spite of our and others’ efforts to have the buildings and its surroundings landmarked. Completed in 1853 by architect James Renwick, the St. Denis Hotel stood at the corner of East 11th Street and Broadway. The property, which was owned by the Renwick family, had been given to them by their relative, Henry Brevoort, a successful farmer and prominent landowner during the late eighteenth century. The hotel was named after its first proprietor, Denis Julian, and its style was derived from Elizabethan and Renaissance models. It was said to be “one of the handsomest buildings on Broadway,” by Miller’s New York as it Is, Or Stranger’s Guide-book to the Cities of New York, Brooklyn and Adjacent Places. James Renwick was responsible for numerous notable Gothic Revival-style buildings during the mid-to late-nineteenth century. His first commission was Grace Church, a French Gothic Revival-style work and one of the city’s first designated landmarks, built in 1847, which has been called “one of the city’s greatest treasures.” Besides the Trinity building, which was demolished in 1853, the St. Denis was the first building in New York to utilize terra cotta as exterior architectural ornament. During its heyday, the St. Denis was located in what was considered an upscale shopping district or “the most fashionable part of Broadway.” It was patronized by many notable individuals, wealthy businessmen, theatrical superstars and Presidents. In September 1867, Mary Todd Lincoln stayed at the St. Denis, while visiting New York for the purpose of selling her personal belongings.

In May of 1877, the St. Denis was the site of Alexander Graham Bell’s first public demonstration of the telephone in New York. He had already patented the telephone and made public demonstrations of it in Boston, a week prior, but was looking for financial backers. He demonstrated this in the hotel’s second-floor “gentlemen’s parlor,” while two hundred invited guests observed. Other distinguished individuals who stayed at the St. Denis were General Ulysses S. Grant, P.T. Barnum, Mark Twain, Roscoe Conkling, Buffalo Bill and Sarah Bernhardt. In 1917, after 64 years of operation, the St. Denis Hotel was closed and the building converted to offices. The reason for its demise was the surrounding neighborhood’s change in character — what had once been New York’s most fashionable neighborhood had become a much less refined mix of industry and commerce and entertainment geared towards the masses. In February 1920, the Renwick family finally sold the property, which had been in their family for 250 years, at auction.

Though stripped of much of its original ornament on its exterior after conversion, the St. Denis’ final hundred years as an office building was not without distinction. The artist Marcel Duchamp maintained a studio here until his death in 1967, and created his final work here. For many years the offices and archives of the Lincoln Brigades, the umbrella organizations for Americans who fought in the Spanish Civil War against the fascists, was located here, as was the group New York Radical Women, who made a name for themselves with their demonstration at the 1968 Miss America pageant at which they unfurled a banner which said “Women’s Liberation.” In 2018, after the City Council approved Mayor de Blasio’s requested upzoning nearby for construction of a ‘tech hub’ on 14th Street, and local Councilmember Carlina Rivera failed to deliver on her promise to condition support for the project on comprehensive zoning or landmark protections for the area, Village Preservation submitted a proposal for landmark designation of the area, including the former St. Denis Hotel.

In late 2018, after plans were announced to demolish the historic building to make way for another tech-related development, Village Preservation staged a protest outside the building attended by hundreds of local residents. Nevertheless the city refused to act, and in 2019 the building was demolished, with the new office tower replacing it. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Mathew Brady, c. 1875 The current structure at this location was built c. 1955. The prior structure at the northwest corner of Broadway and East 10th Street, 785 Broadway, was the studio of noted 19th century photographer Mathew Brady. Brady is best known as the photographer of the American Civil War where he and his staff captured for the first time on camera the tragedies of war. A revolutionary way of broadcasting disturbing images to an as-then unaware public, hundreds of photographs of soldiers lying dead in fields became accessible to households across the country. Though Brady often staged scenes and “touched up” photographs to maximize the horror of his subject matter, he was nonetheless an integral figure in the history of photographic documentation and has since become known as “the father of photojournalism.”

Photo of Abraham Lincoln by Mathew Brady, c. 1860-1865 On February 27, 1860, relatively unknown presidential hopeful Abraham Lincoln gave his celebrated Cooper Union address at the Cooper Union Foundation Building at Cooper Square between Astor Place and East 7th Street. Knowing the South was on the brink of secession, Lincoln focused his speech on the importance of preserving the Union by outlawing slavery in free states but not in the South, an institution he would later abolish in 1863 during the height of the Civil War. But earlier in the day, before that historic speech set into motion Lincoln’s rise to the presidency, he had called on photographer Mathew Brady to take his portrait at his nearby studio in what is now known as NoHo. This temporary studio was located at 643 Broadway, northwest corner of Bleecker Street, before it was demolished and replaced by a Neo-Grec style tenement building in 1878. In a piece written in The World in 1891, Brady claimed that Lincoln had said that “Brady and the Cooper Institute made me President.” It’s hard to argue with that assertion given the high demand for this portrait following the historic speech; re-productions of the captivating photograph appeared in many papers, including Harper’s Weekly, showcasing Lincoln as a serious contender for the presidency during a particularly tumultuous time in the nation’s history. After his short time in that studio, Brady moved to his new location at 785 Broadway in the fall of 1860 and he remained here for the rest of his career. Lincoln, as well as other key figures of the era, sat for a number of portraits for Brady during his presidency.

Existing building at 771-785 Broadway, 2014 Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Designed by architect John Kellum, when completed in 1862 the A. T. Stewart Department Store was the largest building in New York, and one of the first, if not the very first, to use structural steel to hold it up. The new store was described by a journalist from The Independent in 1863 as “…the first and only one of its kind in the world constructed wholly of iron, standing alone, unsupported by any surrounding walls. It is an enduring monument to the mind that conceived it, and the architect who executed it.”

It was designed in the Italian palazzo style, five-stories in height with its exterior painted white. It featured street-level sheets of plate glass between tall Corinthian columns and, above there were four tiers of 84 identically arched windows.

Inside, the upper floors had a central open space topped by a great central rotunda and a huge skylight. The entire exterior was made of cast iron, and unlike Stewart’s first department store at 280 Broadway in Lower Manhattan (New York’s very first Department Store), which was known as “The Marble Palace” for its grand and sumptuous marble exterior, this store was known as “The Iron Palace,” and marked the beginning of the march up Broadway of high-end commercial emporia known in its time as ‘Ladies’ Mile.’

Today, the Stewart House is located at this site, named for its predecessor. This 21-story, full-block apartment building was built c. 1960 and designed by Sylvan Bien. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Herman Melville lived in a now-demolished townhouse at 103 Fourth Avenue from 1847 to 1850.

“Moby Dick” title page, 1851 While living here, he began writing Moby Dick. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The previous structure on this site was built in 1927 as the Academy of Music. Originally a deluxe movie palace, the Academy operated as a movie theater through the early 1970s. By the mid-1960s it also served as a 3,000 seat music venue. Demand for this space as a music venue rose following the 1971 closure of the Fillmore East. It was rechristened the Palladium on September 18, 1976, with a live radio broadcast performance by The Band.

Notable acts that played the venue include Blue Öyster Cult, Iggy Pop, Kiss, Genesis, the Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen Frank Zappa, Patti Smith, The Ramones, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Ozzy Osbourne, Motörhead, The Clash, U2, Duran Duran, The Undertones, and Chuck Berry. The Clash’s iconic “London Calling” album cover was shot here during a performance in September 1979.

From 1985 to 1997 the Palladium operated as a nightclub.

In 1997 the building was demolished to make way for a 12-story NYU dorm housing over 1,100 students. NYU appropriated the name Palladium for the dorm as what we can only assume to be an effort to honor the site’s history.

Ottendorfer branch of the New York Free Circulating Library, 1917 The building where the New York Free Circulating Library was started was also formerly located at this site. The New York Free Circulating Library was established to serve every New Yorker, especially the poor, and to allow them to not only read a wide range of literature but bring it home and share it with their families. New York’s very first free circulating library began in a sewing class at Greenwich Village’s Grace Church, where a teacher sought to provide her students with substantive reading material rather than the ubiquitous sensational tabloids which frequently occupied them. In 1879, the Grace Church teacher and a coterie of other women and teachers started a reading room at 127 East 13th Street, a non-extant building just east of Fourth Avenue in the East Village. Though initially open only two hours a week and containing only 500 books, the free public reading room was so popular there were often lines around the block, and as few as two books were left at the end of a session. Within a year, the library’s collection increased to 1,200 volumes purely from donations, and patrons ranged from children to 70-year-old men.

Bond Street branch of the New York Free Circulating Library, 1917 The New York Free Circulating Library (NYFCL) was officially incorporated in 1880, and by the beginning of the 20th century it had begun to participate in merger negotiations with the newly-formed New York Public Library. In 1901, the NYFCL’s 1.6 million volumes and 11 branches - including Bond Street, Ottendorfer, and Jackson Square - were absorbed into the NYPL. This significantly increased the breadth and reach of the public library system. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The church tower located on this site is the sole remnant of the 1847 Twelfth Street Baptist Church, and in the early 2000s was the subject of a fierce preservation battle led by Village Preservation to save what was one of the few structures in New York to serve as a house of worship for the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish faiths. The Baptist congregation which built this structure in 1847 did not remain here for long amidst the rapidly shifting demographics of the Lower East Side in the mid-19th century, which was experiencing ever-larger waves of immigration. In 1853 it became the home of Temple Emanuel, New York’s first Reform Jewish Congregation, whose present-day Fifth Avenue home is considered the largest reform temple in the world. Before the city’s Jewish population grew larger and more established in the later 19th and 20th centuries, like many immigrant communities they often purchased or used existing houses of worship rather than building their own. A relatively poor congregation at the time, Emanu-El left the church building largely intact on its exterior.

The Jewish congregation moved father north after the Civil War, and sold the building to St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church, a prosperous congregation which felt it needed a more lavish and up-to-date edifice. They hired the esteemed architect Napoleon LeBrun to design what was largely a new church in 1870. Everything except the tower which still stands today was demolished, and a new church in the French Gothic style was erected behind it. A separate but conjoined Catholic school also designed by LeBrun was built at the same time on the 11th Street side of the property, which like the tower stands to this day (a medallion saying “St. Ann’s Parochial School” can still be seen embedded in the building’s crown). The church and the congregation were considered among the wealthiest in the city — the interiors were lavishly decorated in marble, chestnut, and black walnut. Carriages were noted to line 12th Street from Second to Fifth Avenues when special ceremonies took place. The church also had special religious and social significance. It contained a relic, a finger bone of St. Ann, which led to the Papal designation of the church as a shrine in 1929. But as the East Village and its demographics changed, so did the church. By 1978, the connected school building on 11th Street had been sold and converted to apartments. In 1983, the church itself was reorganized as the St. Ann’s Armenian Rite Catholic Cathedral, one of the very few Manhattan churches to offer pre-Vatican II Latin masses.

While this change gave the church a draw beyond the bounds of the immediate neighborhood, it could not inoculate it against the larger pressures facing the Archdiocese of New York. A combination of shrinking attendance and growing costs connected to sexual abuse lawsuits, among other factors, led to a wave of church closures in Manhattan over the next several decades. In 2004, St. Ann’s was closed, and in 2005, the entire site, including an adjacent 1840s townhouse used as a rectory, was sold to Hudson Companies for development of a dorm for NYU. In spite of the structure being one of the very few in New York with the distinction of having served as a house of worship for the city’s three chief traditional faiths – Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism — the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission rejected petitions to landmark the building. Neighbors and preservationists, including Village Preservation, met with NYU and Hudson companies to advocate for the preservation and re-use of as much of the church as possible, as well as its handsome 1840s rectory rowhouse next door. Initial talks indicated plans for a more modestly scaled structure than what was ultimately built, and held out some hope of preservation of not just the church’s façade and steeple, but perhaps some of the spectacular 1870 church as well. Here, however, those ambitions ran headlong into two other powerful currents. One was NYU’s appetite for increased space for its ever-expanding student population. The other was the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) search for increased revenue, in the face of decreasing subsidies from the federal government and increasing competition from email, the internet, and other delivery services. These two forces converged when USPS sold the air rights from its adjacent Cooper Station Post Office to allow the planned NYU dorm (Founder’s Hall) to increase in size by more than 50 percent, for what would be the tallest building in the East Village.

Neighbors and Village Preservation argued that the air rights transfer authorization by the City was improper. Such transfers are premised on the notion that the City through its zoning powers can remove development rights from one site (in this case, the Post Office) and move them to another site (in this case, St. Ann’s Church). But because the USPS is a federal agency, it is immune from New York City zoning regulations, and thus opponents argued the City has no power to prevent the Post Office from building on its site in the future, in spite of supposedly giving away its development rights for the NYU dorm. A five-member board, all appointed by then-Mayor Bloomberg (who approved the original deal) rejected this claim, and the air rights transfer was allowed to go through. The final result was the incredibly odd juxtaposition we see today. The entirety of the spectacular Napoleon LeBrun-designed 1870 church was demolished, as was the 1840s rowhouse rectory. The church façade, tower, and iron gates were impeccably restored but left entirely empty. Of the results, the AIA Guide to New York City said the church tower appears as a “folly behind which lurks yet another dorm for NYU…the effect is of a majestic elk, shot and stuffed.” No plaque or other signage informs the passerby of the rich history behind the church tower sitting in front of the 26-story tower. But its odd presence inevitably raises the question “What happened here?” and provides clues that something much older and likely more beautiful was destroyed to make way for the dorm behind it. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Variety Theatre, 1960. Photo © Estate of Fred W. McDarrah The Variety Photoplays Theater on 3rd Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets was one of New York’s few surviving nickelodeon houses from the earliest stages of moving pictures. It was demolished in 2005 in spite of a campaign by Village Preservation to seek landmark status for the building. Though its earliest history is somewhat unclear, it seems that the original building that housed the Variety Theater at 110 3rd Avenue was constructed as early as 1897. Only 25 feet wide and just under 100 feet deep, it was most likely a store or residence that was altered to convert the space into a two story theater in 1914. As the moving picture craze swept the city in the early twentieth century, nickelodeon theaters sprung up all around the city to cash in on and bring the new medium to the masses.

While the Union Square area had served as home to the center of legitimate theater in New York in the late 19th century, as the twentieth century progressed that center moved north, and the neighboring East Village area became a center of ethnic theater and popular theater, movie houses, nickelodeons, and dance halls. The uses of other nearby sites such as Webster Hall, the Yiddish Art Theater, and the Academy of Music/Palladium on 14th Street all reflect this. The Variety seated 450 and as the Times notes, “first presented groups of two-reelers, collections of individual features, each 15 or 20 minutes long. This was at a period when the feature-length film was still uncommon and films in general were generally considered low-culture — ”photo plays” or not.” In 1930 a balcony, new lobby, and art deco renovations to the original 1923 marquee sign were made by architects Boak and Paris.

Because of its limited size, the Variety never attracted the best first-run films, and by the late 1960s, the Variety — like many other struggling theaters in New York — turned to blue movies to help keep it afloat. By the 1970s and 1980s, the theater screened a somewhat unpredictable mélange of B and/or C-grade films as well as soft and hardcore pornography. The theater space also became a meeting place for gay men. A writer for the Bright Lights Film Journal described the scene when he visited the Variety in 1984: “Upon entering the auditorium, I saw the movie was playing upside-down. This lasted a good fifteen minutes. Nobody complained or perhaps even noticed… It was like stepping into a time capsule. I noticed four large globe-like lighting fixtures that had somehow survived the decades. The walls were an unremarkable (patched) plaster, but the ceiling was special, composed of patterned pressed tin. There was a single modest balcony. My main memory was of patrons moving about the theater in a constant bustle and streaming into and out of the toilets oddly situated down front below the screen and surely a distraction for anyone trying to watch the film. The room was filled with the continual rustlings and creakings of people on the move. It was more like a mass happening than a movie screening, and in fact I have no recollection of the film at all.”

"Taxi Driver" film poster, 1976 As the cinematic quality of the films shown at the Variety declined during the 1970s and 80s, so did the reputation of the surrounding East Village neighborhood. The Variety Theater was even featured in the film Taxi Driver. The Variety ended its run as a movie theater in 1989 when it was closed by the city’s health department, but later reopened in 1991 as a live off-Broadway theater.

It ran for more than a decade as the Variety Arts Theater until 2004 when it was closed and demolished in 2005 to make room for a 21-story condominium tower. Village Preservation campaigned to get the historic theater landmarked, but the City refused to act, in spite of the building being one of the few remaining structures in New York which served as a nickelodeon. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .