South Village landmarking finally moves ahead
 Next Tuesday June 23rd, the city is scheduled to take three important actions on landmarking the South Village, an area GVSHP has been fighting to preserve and protect.
Most importantly, the city will ‘calendar’ the proposed landmark designation of the first third of GVSHP’s proposed South Village Historic District, covering the area west of 6th Avenue. This proposed 235 building, 12-block landmark designation covers about 85% of the area west of 6th Avenue which GVSHP proposed for landmark protection, and, if enacted, would be far and away the largest expansion of landmark protections in Greenwich Village since the designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District in 1969. The ‘calendaring,’ which will be voted upon on Tuesday, is the first formal step in the process of considering landmark designation for the area, and puts preliminary protections in place to help prevent out-of-character demolition, alteration, or new development. This is followed some time later by a public hearing and a vote of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), which puts in place permanent landmark protections.
 The LPC will also ‘calendar’ a proposed extension of the SoHo Historic District, which includes several buildings on the southeastern edge of GVSHP’s proposed South Village Historic District. And finally, the LPC will also hold a public hearing (the step after calendaring) on the proposed landmark designation of 57 Sullivan Street. Built in 1817, 57 Sullivan Street is the oldest documented surviving house in the South Village, and is one of thirteen ‘federal’ houses (1790-1835) which GVSHP and the NY Landmarks Conservancy had proposed for landmark designation (seven of those houses have already been landmarked, and another, 7 Leroy Street, is within the proposed landmark district in the South Village to be calendared on Tuesday).
This is historic progress for our efforts to preserve the South Village and federal houses in Lower Manhattan. The LPC has also indicated that once they have completed landmark designation of this first third, they will consider the remaining two-thirds of our proposed South Village Historic District. However, much has been lost in the South Village already, and much more continues to be threatened. Thus we are urging the LPC to move as swiftly as possible to designate the ENTIRE South Village.
For more information on the South Village preservation effort, CLICK HERE.
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Next: 06/23/09
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