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About 2 Fifth Avenue
This 20-story, 391-unit building, designed by Emery Roth & sons, occupies the prime residential plot in Greenwich Village overlooking 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 Rudin, attempting to blend in with the surrounding older townhouses, erected a low-rise wing faced in red-brick with white trim. This five-story wing, whose height is actually smaller than the adjacent, and much grander, townhouses, was the result of a major controversy with the community, many of whose civic leaders protested the original plan to put the 20-story tower flush with the street fronting the park. The bulk of the building, a white-brick slab setback from the avenue with two bays that project out closer to the avenue, is not set back from Eighth Street where it deadens, somewhat, that steps chaotic but lively retail activity.
In his superb book, 'Shaping the City, New York and the Municipal Art Society,' (Clarkson Potter, 1995), Gregory G. Gilmartin recounts that when news of the proposed development of 2 Fifth Avenue broke, 'Horrified Villages formed the Committee to Save the Rhinelander Houses and called on the city to buy and preserve the old houses' that then occupied the site.
'Rudin's building was perfectly legal, but the City Planning Commission was appalled by its scale, and, as Harvey Wiley Corbett put it, 'Of its own volition, without fanfare or publicity, arranged for a meeting of a few men representing both sides to sit down and talk the matter over.' Corbett was one of them. He helped work out a compromise in which the building's bulk was redistributed.' Corbett helped architect Richard Roth Jr. rework his plans and praised him: 'No architect could make a more serious and conscientious effort to preserve the north side of the Square,' Corbett told his colleagues at the Municipal Art Society, according to Gilmartin.
'Roth's intentions,' Gilmartin continued, 'were better than his client's, however, and the Committee to Save the Rhinelander Houses soon told MAS that the design had been changed. The new building's cornice no longer quite aligned with those of its neighbors, the small entrances were gone, and balconies had appeared. When MAS learned of this, it suddenly reversed course and called on the city to purchase the Rhinelander Houses. Use them for some public purpose, MAS said, or transfer them to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. That didn't happen. Two Fifth Avenue might easily have been a better building, but even in its compromised form it remained a kind of triumph for the Municipal Art Society, for [Jerry] Finkelstein [then chairman of the City Planning Commission], for the planning commission, and even for Sam Rudin, who was spared the odium of having utterly ruined Washington Sq'Roth's intentions,' Gilmartin continued, 'were better than his client's, however, and the Committee to Save the Rhinelander Houses soon told MAS that the design had been changed. The new building's cornice no longer quite aligned with those of its neighbors, the small entrances were gone, and balconies had appeared. When MAS learned of this, it suddenly reversed course and called on the city to purchase the Rhinelander Houses. Use them for some public purpose, MAS said, or transfer them to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. That didn't happen. Two Fifth Avenue might easily have been a better building, but even in its compromised form it remained a kind of triumph for the Municipal Art Society, for [Jerry] Finkelstein [then chairman of the City Planning Commission], for the planning commission, and even for Sam Rudin, who was spared the odium of having utterly ruined Washington Square.'
The gray brick facade of the tower has a subtle modulation from the rounded short brick columns between the windows and the fence around the low-rise building's landscaping has a pleasant rectilinear form rather than traditional spikes.
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