Greenwich Village has had a long and storied history combatting demolition of their living spaces and defending the home of artists and other visionaries. In the 1950 and 1960’s, Robert Moses, the city planning commissioner, used the city’s power of demolition to clear unused industry space to build housing projects, designating industrial neighborhoods as “blighted.” The housing projects, located on the peripheries of the city, would be used to house racial and ethnic minorities. When he attempted to do so in Greenwich Village, however, he was met with strong resistance from the people currently living there, a group of New York middle class who took advantage of the plummeting prices and aesthetic appeal of the homes there.
Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, became the hero and figurehead of the movement to combat neighborhood destruction. Mayor Robert Wagner ended up replacing Moses with Robert Felt, who was more cognizant of the citizens’ desires, and instituted both a preservation committee, a less “bull-dozer” approach to urban housing development, and protection of loft housing specifically for artists.
New York University students were, in fact, once part of the fight against private housing development of Greenwich Village. They, and other Village residents, fought against gentrification and private housing development. A concerted effort, for example, stopped developer Joseph Siegel’s planned large apartment building, and new reforms that required housing developments to leave open, park like space made it difficult for other private housing development.
Popular support also prevented the closing down of the White Horse Tavern, which Dylan Thomas had his last drink there. Residents worked hard to prevent gentrification and keep the “bohemian” culture, as well as the affordable housing for Puerto Rican, Eastern European, and other immigrants.
Resistance to New York University development also has historic roots. NYU had plans for a library, Law Center, and Student Center and both students and residents fought heavily against it.
In this diatribe against urban renewal written in the form of this author’s memoir of fighting to preserve the West Village as a child, he equates proposed projects with urban destruction. The author is a proponent of preservation and is in fact in the process of writing a book about the battle to preserve Greenwich Village. He recounts many of the times that residents of the West Village had to defend their homes from a government who would turn them into high-rises and highways, and predicts that this conflict is nowhere near its end. The author is particularly enraged at the poorly disguised attempts to segregate through redlining and by replacing and razing the areas in which minorities live. This piece, which was written to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of saving the West Village, reveals the many problems inherent in government projects: the influence of the rich, the lack of advocacy for the poor, and the local opposition. The author stresses the importance of individual and group advocacy and its power to change government decisions on projects such as these. This is particularly relevant to our project’s discussion of the New York University expansion plan and its opposition. According to the author, the plan is representative of the perpetual propensity for the city to change and the tough uphill preservationist battle that is sure to follow. But the author’s success in the battle for the West Village indicates that there is hope for those preservationists who advocate for Greenwich Village and its surrounding areas.
In this work, the relationship between historic preservation and housing/economic development is further explored. We know that the area of Greenwich Village is increasingly residential and commercial as well, which can become an odd mix. However, the real issue lies in the increasing efforts of private institutions and businesses such as NYU, trying to expand due to lack of space. This often conflicts with the ideas of preservationists who are trying to retain the history or nostalgia of a neighborhood. The authors spoke of how historic preservation has added to housing and economic development. However, it halts the progress of “market prowess, and some argue it is used to thwart new development” (abstract). The main argument in this document was to provide ways in which historic preservation can be achieved, but without consequences affecting economic development.
For our research, we looked into the relationship between expansionists and preservationists and it is often a difficult one with much negotiation. This document stated some methods in which the relationship can be smoother such as “tax credit changes, more flexible building codes, and a “tiered” system of designating historic properties at varying levels of significance” (abstract). This is important to our research because it projects ways for preservation and expansion to work more efficiently in the future and provides us with a new outlook on how preservation can be achieved without completely derailing development.
In the 2012 report prepared by Gambit Consulting, it highlights the economic and collateral impacts the New York University planned 2031 expansion can have on Greenwich Village and Washington Square park. It thoroughly examines both the positive and negative, economic, historic and environmental consequences the plan has. But after their research and data analysis, they found that the positive impacts on the Village is minimal compared to the large collateral damage it will have. They found that the positive impact of NYU expanding further into Greenwich Village is that it will increase retail sales by 2.5%, but explains how the plan may fail economically, as it will cost around 2.5 billion dollars. Gambit Consulting shows how this will reduce the economic benefit citywide and destroy the life of residents in Greenwich Village, if NYU does not stick to their promise of paying for the 2.5 billion dollar project. This risk is too big and was highlighted as a big concern. Another negative impact the expansion can have on Greenwich Village is the harm it can bring on historically significant features of the Village by reducing the amount of open space by 2.52 acres. This would damage the city environmentally and the residents socially as their space for living and home expansion is being eaten. This has already happened as NYU fights with the residents over which sites can be build upon, regardless of its historical significance. The final negative impact the report highlights is the “reduced opportunities to pursue a more environmentally sensitive design” (p 30). According to this report, this construction would increase the carbon footprint in the environment and that even though the buildings will be environmentally safe, their overall construction would create a “number of negative environmental impacts” (p 29). These were some of the main positive and negative impacts the report highlighted, and it was determined through the use of statistical data and NYU expansion history. This source is relevant to our project as it shows the future impact gentrification can have on an area and goes into the argument of education vs. history. These two ideas are what the residents of Greenwich Village are fighting about and these “predictions” are able to demonstrate this argument by showing how gentrification for education can destroy history and the economy of a neighborhood.
In New York University and the City, Frusciano and Pettit discusses the history of the unique university within the social and political community of New York City. They talk about the expansion of New York University and explored how the large university created disgruntlement among communities, such as Greenwich Village. The dispute between NYU and the residents of Greenwich Village began in the early 1950s, when the park commissioner of New York decided to redevelop Washington Square to clear out the slums. NYU saw this as a great opportunity to expand their campus and decided to back the project up by purchasing part of the land for redevelopment. They told the Planning Commission that they will build new apartment units for the resident, but when the plan was shared with the community, the residents in Greenwich Village voiced their opposition at NYU saying that this plan was a “slick scheme” to take over private property. They argued against NYU’s idea of using their land to build libraries, classrooms, and centers for private use, when the original plan of this “slum clearance is to construct homes, not university buildings” (p 209) . However, in 1954 NYU took title to the land and displaced many businesses and residents within Washington Park. From then, the university continued to expand economically and socially, gaining more land from the city and destroying residential space. This led to the creation of the Greenwich Village Association and the fight to designate Greenwich Village as a historical district. These changes in the village caused the residents to distrust the university and caused them to be at odds with the university for years. Today this “battle” continues as the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation tries to protect buildings, monuments and more from the expansion and change created by NYU. NYU wants to appease the community and persuade the residents that the university exists to serve them, but cannot stop as they want to continue their project to expand more into Greenwich Village. This book used the history of NYU to display the argument between the city and the private community, and is relevant to our project as it shows the history behind this argument.
