This 20-story, 343-unit building, designed by Emery Roth & Sons, occupies a prime residential plot in Greenwich Village just to the north of Washington Square Park at the base of Fifth Avenue.

It stretches from the north edge of Washington Square Park to the area’s "Main Street" - West Eighth Street.

When the project was first announced, it was reported on the front page of The New York Times.

"It was a call to battle. The eleven old Rhinelander brownstones that fronted on Washington Square North and along Fifth Avenue to Eighth Street had been an obvious target for development since the 1920’s, but had occasioned several defaults and the defeat of a thirty-story tower planned by another developer," wrote Tom Schactman in his book, "Skyscraper Dreams, The Great Real Estate Dynasties of New York," (Little, Brown and Company, 1991).

"The Rhinelander buildings contained a church, several clubs, a former stable, and a handful of choice residential apartments, one occupied by an editor of the Herald Tribune who spearheaded a campaign to prevent development. The Tribune editor recruited the Washington Square Association, the Municipal Art Society, the City Planning Commission, and every other group that could express outrage over the idea....Opposition swelled when it was learned the Roses and the Minskoffs had bought nearby sites and made plans that might transform the small-scale residential character of the area," Schactman noted.

On its park frontage, the developer, Samuel...