35 Cooper Square Memorial and Rally
 Last week, GVSHP joined the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, Councilmember Rosie Mendez, and several other community and preservation organizations for a rally memorializing the destruction of the 1825 federal-style house at 35 Cooper Square (5th/6th Street and Bowery) and to call upon the City to do more to protect the historic resources and character of the Bowery. See photos HERE and watch the video HERE, and read coverage HERE.
After promising advocates to take a serious look at the feasibility of preserving all or part of the house as part of the development of a larger parcel, developer Arun Bhatia simply told the groups he would not preserve the building, and almost immediately began demolition. For several years, GVSHP and other groups petitioned the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) to landmark the nearly 200 year old structure, which was built by the Stuyvesant family and over the years housed luminaries of the Beat poetry movement. Unfortunately, the LPC consistently refused.
GVSHP and the other groups have used the occasion of this historic house’s demolition to again call attention to the need to provide landmark protections for the remaining historic resources on the Bowery, and to change the woefully inappropriate zoning for the east side of the street, which encourages out-of-scale construction with large bonuses for hotel and dormitory development.
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