New York University has altered its plan to demolish the building at 133-139 MacDougal Street that contains the historic Provincetown Playhouse and now plans to build a building cantilevered over it.

"NYU agreeing to preserve the existing theater within the new building is a giant victory," declared Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, adding that "this is clearly a step in the right direction."

"However," he continued, "the remainder of the building is quite historic, and we are still very concerned about any plan that would include demolishing it."

"The original Provincetown Playhouse from 1916-1918 was at 139 MacDougal Street, at the north end of the current building," Mr. Berman told CityRealty.com today, "and iconic sites from the heyday of Greenwich Village bohemia including the Liberal Club and the Washington Square Bookshop, which was the hangout for Max Eastman, Theodore Dreiser, Margaret Sanger, and Sinclair Lewis, were found in #135 and #137 MacDougal Street (all now part of the Provincetown Playhouse and Apartments at 133-139 MacDougal Street, which NYU proposed to demolish). The apartments now found in the rest of the building at various times houses Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, artist Dorothy Gillespie, and actor Matthew Perry. In short, saving the Provincetown Playhouse Theater is important, but the ENTIRE building is historically significant, and we would continue to argue that the whole thing should be saved."

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation sent the university a letter April 18, 2008 declared that "at this delicate time in the University's efforts to build trust and establish a constructive dialogue with its neighbors, this exactly the wrong thing for NYU to do." The organization also circulated an e-mail urging the preservation of the playhouse that was signed by many actors, playwrights and preservationists including Blythe Danner and John Guare.

An article in today's edition of The Villager said that the university and its architect for the project, Morris Adjmi, gave a tour of the playhouse Tuesday to the newspaper and said that it hoped "to preserve as much of the theater's historic fabric as possible...possibly by cantilevering the new development over the theater, or by adding some long columns at four points around the theater that will anchor in to the ground and help support the new project above."

"The theater's chairs, apparently dating from a 1940 renovation, and the walls might also be preserved. The brick entryway...definitely would be preserved up to the horizonatal brick course work below the second-story windows; the ocular windows flanking the doorway would be reopened and circa-1940, period-appropriate wooden doors installed. The purple awning would be removed," the article stated, adding that the theater space was originally a stable.

The university today said that the playhouse "of the future will be home to NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development."

The playhouse was launched works by Mr. Guare, Eugene O'Neill, Edward Albee, Sam Shepherd and David Mamet among others.