The New York City Department of Buildings issued a stop work order late yesterday afternoon after human remains were unearthed during excavation work for the Trump SoHo Hotel at 246 Spring Street.
The remains were found about 10 feet underground near the corner of Varick Street.
The property, which was acquired in September, 2005, by Bayrock/Sapir LLC, a partnership of the Bayrock Group, Tamir Sapir and Donald Trump, had been a parking lot and apparently several decades before it had been the site of a Presbyterian Church that was demolished in 1963.
Construction began at the site November 1 over the objections of several community organizations, including the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, that have argued that the 454-foot-high project is a residential hotel and is not permitted in a manufacturing zone, where transient hotels are permitted.
The building will have 410 hotel condominium units and three suites.
Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, sent a letter today to Patricia Lancaster, the city's Commissioner of the Department of Buildings, and Robert Tierney, the chairman of the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission, in which he urged that "no further work be allowed to continue until the source and origin of the remains have been independently identified, and their significance fully evaluated by proper authorities."
"Given the history of this area," his letter maintained, "there are many reasons why a burial ground on this site may be of special significance to our city. The southern part of Greenwich Village was once home to a community known as 'Little Africa,' which was in the mid-19th Century the largest African-American community in New York. Some reports indicate that the church on this site throughout most of the 19th Century was one which served an African-American congregation."
The building would be the tallest between Madison Square and the Civic Center in Lower Manhattan. The project have an outdoor swimming pool on the top floor of the its five-story base, a Cornelia Spa, a restaurant and catering facility.
The project has frontage on Spring, Varick and Dominick Streets and is not far from the Holland Tunnel and the Hudson River Park.
The proposed project is close to several new residential condominium projects to the west on Spring Street.
The remains were found about 10 feet underground near the corner of Varick Street.
The property, which was acquired in September, 2005, by Bayrock/Sapir LLC, a partnership of the Bayrock Group, Tamir Sapir and Donald Trump, had been a parking lot and apparently several decades before it had been the site of a Presbyterian Church that was demolished in 1963.
Construction began at the site November 1 over the objections of several community organizations, including the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, that have argued that the 454-foot-high project is a residential hotel and is not permitted in a manufacturing zone, where transient hotels are permitted.
The building will have 410 hotel condominium units and three suites.
Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, sent a letter today to Patricia Lancaster, the city's Commissioner of the Department of Buildings, and Robert Tierney, the chairman of the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission, in which he urged that "no further work be allowed to continue until the source and origin of the remains have been independently identified, and their significance fully evaluated by proper authorities."
"Given the history of this area," his letter maintained, "there are many reasons why a burial ground on this site may be of special significance to our city. The southern part of Greenwich Village was once home to a community known as 'Little Africa,' which was in the mid-19th Century the largest African-American community in New York. Some reports indicate that the church on this site throughout most of the 19th Century was one which served an African-American congregation."
The building would be the tallest between Madison Square and the Civic Center in Lower Manhattan. The project have an outdoor swimming pool on the top floor of the its five-story base, a Cornelia Spa, a restaurant and catering facility.
The project has frontage on Spring, Varick and Dominick Streets and is not far from the Holland Tunnel and the Hudson River Park.
The proposed project is close to several new residential condominium projects to the west on Spring Street.
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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