This 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. . . .

After a year and a half campaign by Village Preservation, on October 31, 2017 the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission landmarked these two 1866 cast iron loft buildings which faced the wrecking ball and were slated to be replaced with a 300 ft. tall office tower.

Willem de Kooning in his studio at 831 Broadway. Photo © Estate of Fred W. McDarrah These 1866 lofts were once home to Willem de Kooning and a vast array of influential art world figures, and were connected to critical figures in early American industry and commerce. When Village Preservation discovered plans to demolish these buildings in early 2016, we began a campaign to save them, unearthing historic documentation of their significance which became the basis for their designation, lining up support for preservation among government officials and art world figures, placing an op-ed in the New York Times with Eric Rayman calling for the buildings to be saved, and generating thousands of letters to Mayor de Blasio and the LPC in support of designation. The LPC initially rejected Village Preservation’s plea for landmark designation, but later relented and calendared the buildings for designation, over opposition from the developer/owner. Read the full history of the buildings, and Village Preservation’s landmarking proposal, here.

Wheeler & Wilson four motion feed sewing machine, 1853 Both buildings were designed by Griffith Thomas, called “the most fashionable architect of his generation” by the American Institute of Architects and “among the best architects in the city” by cast‐iron preservationist Margot Gayle. They were built by the Lorillard family, which launched one of the world’s largest tobacco empires and created what’s been called the earliest known advertising campaign and the best known trademark in the world. They housed Wilson Sewing Machines; Wilson was the inventor of one of the earliest sewing machines, which revolutionized the landscape of American manufacturing and domestic life. And they housed “antique dealer to the stars” Howard Kaplan.

“John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1963” by Elaine de Kooning But perhaps most importantly the buildings served as an almost unparalleled nexus of art world activity starting in the mid‐20th century. Willem de Kooning had his last New York home here during one of his most productive periods, in one of the first artist’s live/work lofts in a commercial space. Elaine de Kooning painted John F. Kennedy’s presidential portrait here. MoMa director William Rubin, who defined the museum’s direction in the 1970s and 80s, had a loft here designed by a young Richard Meier which served as a gathering place for Abstract Expressionist artists.

“Voyage” by Jules Olitski, 1962 Color Field painting school leader Jules Olitski, and painters Paul Jenkins and Larry Poons lived and worked here. de Kooning and others were drawn here to the ample light and the proximity to other art world centers like the Cedar Tavern and the East 10th Street galleries.

Paula Poons, 2017 Listen to Paula Poons’ Oral History here. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The former McCreery Dry Goods Store at 801-07 Broadway/67 East 11th Street has been the subject of a more than fifty year preservation campaign which helped result in the building being saved from demolition and repurposed in one of the most consequential examples of adaptive reuse in New York, but is still not subject to landmark protections. James McCreery & Co. Dry Goods opened its doors in 1869. McCreery commissioned a new store on Broadway and 11th Street, responding to the area’s growing population of wealthy New Yorkers who were moving north of Washington Square. The building was designed by architect John Kellum, known for his work in the then-new medium of cast-iron. Kellum incorporated into the design a new kind of show window with extensive glazing. The opulent Italianate/French Second Empire style provided an appropriate setting for the extravagant goods housed inside, namely the luxurious silks unavailable elsewhere.

801-807 Broadway, 1893 Focusing on the female shopper, the store catered to the monied carriage trade. Before long, The New York Times would deem it “one of the most highly esteemed dry goods establishments in America.” Around 1895, McCreery followed the department store trend up to “Ladies’ Mile,” 6th Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets, when he opened his second store on 6th Avenue and 23rd Street. McCreery sold the 11th Street building to the Methodist Book Concern and Missionary Society and leased back space in the lower floors; McCreery repurchased the building in 1889. James McCreery & Co. remained in the building until 1902. By 1910 the original mansard roof had been replace and the storefront housed Fleischman’s Restaurant. The upper floors were occupied by factories that produced suits, shoes, and leather wares. In 1966, 801-807 Broadway became one of the first structures in New York City to be considered for individual landmark designation by the Commission due to its clear architectural and cultural significance. However, in 1971, a fire began in one of the factories in the building and destroyed the interior of the building before designation could take place. The building nevertheless remained under consideration for landmarking, or “calendared,” for the next 50 years. Thanks to the cast-iron construction, the façade was left unscathed by the fire. In 1972, the building was purchased by the Elghanayan brothers. When their intentions to demolish the remaining shell and erect a high-rise apartment building in its place were announced, the preservationists and the local community protested. Residents rallied along with the Friends of Cast Iron and community groups, appearing before the Board of Appeals. In response, the Board Standards and Appeals granted variances that, for the first time, made adapting a cast-iron structure such as this to residential use feasible and legal, thus paving the way for a slew of similar such conversions in Lower Manhattan and throughout New York that would follow.

Stephens B. Jacobs Group, PC, architects, was commissioned to transform the burned shell into 144 apartments – no two of which are identical. The large, arched windows, the interior Corinthian cast-iron columns, and the original high ceiling dimensions were retained, resulting in dramatic spaces. The later one-story addition which had replaced the mansard roof was removed, and two setback stories were added. It was renamed the Cast Iron Building. Completed in 1974, it was the first renovation of a cast-iron building into conventionally-financed housing and a fine example of re-purposing vintage structures. Much of the structure’s original cast-iron façade from the 19th century remains intact. And at the same time, the late 20th century alterations reflect one of the most consequential and influential building transformations in Lower Manhattan and New York of the last half-century, thus making 801-807 Broadway arguably of even greater significance now than when it was first calendared by the Commission in 1966. In 2014, 801-807 Broadway was among 95 sites that had been calendared for designation for several years that the NYC Landmarks Commission proposed to ‘de-calendar’ or remove from the list of sites under consideration for designation, with no opportunity for public comment or for consideration of the individual merits of each site. Village Preservation, fellow preservation groups, and elected officials pushed back strongly against this plan, calling instead for a transparent process allowing public comment and consideration of each individual site. The Commission listened and each building was permitted a hearing. Although 801-807 Broadway was not landmarked, it was removed from the list without prejudice, meaning that it could be considered for designation at a future time. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other 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.

James Renwick 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.”

Mary Todd Lincoln, 1846-1847 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.

Ulysses S. Grant, 1870-1880 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.

“Étant donnés” by Marcel Duchamp, 2014 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.

“Notes from the First Year” by the New York Radical Women, 1968 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.”

New building construction at 797-799 Broadway 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. . . .

This building is believed to be the last surviving horse and carriage auction mart building in New York City. It was threatened with demolition until Village Preservation got the Landmark Preservation Commission to hold an emergency hearing on landmarking the building on September 7, 2006, which started the long path toward designation of the building as an official New York City landmark. A once-common building type in New York, these marts are distinguished by their high central halls, where horses were paraded around on rings for potential buyers to review. This particular survivor also has an unusually distinguished history. It was built in 1903 by Jardine, Kent, and Jardine, one of the era’s most distinguished architectural firms. According to contemporary reports in the New York Times, in the mart’s early years “the Belmonts and the Vanderbilts and other families transacted their horse affairs” there. Later, the building was converted to a machine shop, and there according to the New York Times during World War II women were taught “assembly and inspection work, the reading of blueprints, and various mechanical aspects needed in defense industries.” (This inspired Village Preservation’s use of the ‘Rosie the Riveter’ image and “We Can Save It” slogan for our campaign to landmark the building and save it from demolition.) Most recently, the building served as the studio of Frank Stella, one of the late 20th century’s most notable and influential artists. Few buildings in New York could be said to have had such a distinguished history, intersecting with so many key phases of our city’s development and transformation. But we very nearly lost it. In 2006, Village Preservation discovered that the building had been sold and the new owner planned to tear it down for a seven-story apartment building. We immediately brought the danger to the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s (LPC) attention, and requested swift action to save it. Fortunately, while construction plans for the new building had been approved, demolition permits had not yet been issued, which are irreversible and cannot be preempted by landmark designation. The Commission responded to our call, and calendared and heard the building quickly, saving it from demolition. But it took six long years to actually get the building landmarked, and it was finally designated on May 15, 2012. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of other 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 Theater, 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 feels 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. . . .