Saint Germain, 33 Greenwich Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 33 Greenwich Avenue by Carter Horsley

This white-brick cooperative apartment building at 33 Greenwich Avenue was erected in 1962 and has 151 units.

Its name, Saint Germain, is emblazoned near the bottom of the blank black-brick façade that runs up its façade on 10th Street near the Greenwich Avenue corner.

The building is also distinguished by its protruding floor-plates from the second through the ninth floors on the Greenwich Avenue façade that gives it a light, airy, winged appearance that is a marked improved upon its boxy, undifferentiated white-brick cousins of its era. The building is setback a few feet on Greenwich Avenue.

The building was erected across the avenue from Sutter's, the city's finest maker of prune danishes until it closed. It is also diagonally across the avenue from the Jefferson Market Courthouse Library and its extensive gardens that replace the Art Deco-style Women's House of Detention.

It is across 10th Street from Squad 18 of the New York City Fire Department and this block in the 1960's had two of the most popular restaurants in Greenwich Village, Casey's, which was the most elegant, and the Ninth Circle, a duplex establishment that was very hip and one of the hangouts of Charlie Mingus, the bass player.

An east-bound cross-town bus comes down West 10th Street and turns right at Greenwich Avenue to continue on to West 8th Street and the west-bound cross-town bus crosses on Chistopher Street, one block to the south.

There are subway stations at 8th Street and the Avenue of the Americas and at Sheridan Square nearby on Seventh Avenue at Christopher Street.

Balducci's is one block away on the Avenue of the Americas, the large playground of PS 41 is half a block to the west on Greenwich Avenue and there are many restaurants in the vicinity.

This building has a garage and some protruding air-conditioners and some terraces and some sidewalk landscaping. It has an attractive rooftop watertank enclosure.

It was converted to a cooperative in 1986 and has a health club.