Front (left) and rear (right) facades of 67 Greenwich Street
PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release Contact: Andrew Berman, Executive Director
June 26, 2005 Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
FIVE DOWN, EIGHT TO GO –
by Preservationists Approved Today;
Amidst the Canyons of Lower Manhattan, Now Assured
New York – Preservationists expressed joy today at the designation by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission of 67 Greenwich Street, an unusual, double-width former mansion at 67 Greenwich Street in Lower Manhattan, as a New York City Landmark. The house is the fifth of thirteen federal-era (1790-1835) houses proposed for landmark designation by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and the New York Landmarks Conservancy in 2004 that the Commission has chosen to designate. The four previously designated houses were 127, 129, and 131 MacDougal Street and 4 St. Mark’s Place; for further information on the full thirteen federals proposal, CLICK HERE.
“This is a wonderful day for New York and for perhaps its most precious and vulnerable class of buildings – the federal house. These wonderful survivors continue to dot the landscape of Lower Manhattan, giving it rich texture and history. But if their special value as links to the earliest days of our City’s and our nation’s development is not recognized, we will continue to lose more of these wonderful structures. I applaud the actions of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and urge them to move ahead with hearing and designating the remaining eight houses, which capture equally important and compelling slices of our City’s history,” stated Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation Executive Director Andrew Berman.
67 Greenwich Street, also known as the Robert and Anne Dickey House, is also an unusually grand early federal house four bays wide with an elliptical rear bay. The house is a remarkable survivor, having also originally been part of a row of identical houses on what was then New York’s most elegant residential street. The house is now the sole remnant of this row. 67 Greenwich Street escaped destruction from the building of the nearby Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel entrance, as well as of the 9/11 Attacks.
Designation of 67 Greenwich Street took several months, partly due to resistance by the current owners, who claimed that the house was structurally unsound and therefore should not be landmarked. However, independent experts hired by the New York Landmarks Conservancy examined the house and concluded that the building was clearly capable on being secured and maintained; licensed architects who toured the house on behalf of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation came to the same conclusion.
Designation of 67 Greenwich Street was of particular satisfaction to preservationists, as this building was first heard by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1965 – its first year of existence – but never designated. “What a wonderful pre-Fourth of July gift to the City – one of our oldest, grandest houses, which has survived for almost 200 years and awaited landmark desigantion for nearly forty years – finally gets its due,” added Berman.
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To urge the Landmarks Preservation Commission to move forward with protecting more of the
proposed federal houses, CLICK HERE
To support GVSHP’s preservation efforts, CLICK HERE