The New York City Department of Buildings sent a letter January 7 to John Bon-Tien Wu of Tawara LLC of Great Neck, NY, stating that it was planning to revoke permits it had issued for an 8-story mixed-use building he was erecting at 178 Sullivan Street.
The developer was given 15 days to respond and is now negotiating with the department. He wants to erect a building with a jazz club/cabaret, an art gallery and six apartments.
The site had formerly been occupied by a five-story red-brick building that was close to a smaller building owned by Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue magazine, that is part of the handsome MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens Historic District that occupies much of the midblock south of Bleecker Street.
Ms. Wintour complained about the project being "out of scale" a year ago to the Landmarks Preservation Commission and last week also wrote a letter to City Council President Christine Quinn.
The building permit had been sought by Emily Lin of Lin + Associates of Kew Gardens, NY.
The building, which is in construction, would be about 80 feet high, or about 20 feet higher than permitted under the city's quality housing and sliver building regulations.
According to the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the townhouses in the historic district are a "small enclave planned around a private central garden" and "became a prototype for related developments of the 1920s."
"In 1920 the Hearth and Home Corporation purchased 22 deteriorated Greek Revival Row Houses built between 1844 and 1850. It commissioned a rehabilitation from the architects Francis Y. Joannes and Maxwell Hyde who removed the stoops and gave two street facades a Colonial Revival appearance, as well as communal backyards," according to the society.
The development, the society has said, "served as a model for several other redevelopment projects in the South Village in the 1920s and 30s, where older buildings (often tenements) were joined together to create communal spaces and more modern appearances for their buildings. This was in many ways reflective of the changes in the neighborhood in the inter-war years: foreign immigration had subsided, but the area was increasingly of interest to Americans of a creative or bohemian bent."
Ms. Wintour has lived in her house on Sullivan Street since 1992, according to an article by Melissa Klein in today's edition of The New York Post. The article also noted that Richard Gere, the actor, sold his house in the historic district for $12.8 million in 2007 and that "a home on the MacDougal Street side of the garden is currently on the market for $8.8 million."
The developer was given 15 days to respond and is now negotiating with the department. He wants to erect a building with a jazz club/cabaret, an art gallery and six apartments.
The site had formerly been occupied by a five-story red-brick building that was close to a smaller building owned by Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue magazine, that is part of the handsome MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens Historic District that occupies much of the midblock south of Bleecker Street.
Ms. Wintour complained about the project being "out of scale" a year ago to the Landmarks Preservation Commission and last week also wrote a letter to City Council President Christine Quinn.
The building permit had been sought by Emily Lin of Lin + Associates of Kew Gardens, NY.
The building, which is in construction, would be about 80 feet high, or about 20 feet higher than permitted under the city's quality housing and sliver building regulations.
According to the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the townhouses in the historic district are a "small enclave planned around a private central garden" and "became a prototype for related developments of the 1920s."
"In 1920 the Hearth and Home Corporation purchased 22 deteriorated Greek Revival Row Houses built between 1844 and 1850. It commissioned a rehabilitation from the architects Francis Y. Joannes and Maxwell Hyde who removed the stoops and gave two street facades a Colonial Revival appearance, as well as communal backyards," according to the society.
The development, the society has said, "served as a model for several other redevelopment projects in the South Village in the 1920s and 30s, where older buildings (often tenements) were joined together to create communal spaces and more modern appearances for their buildings. This was in many ways reflective of the changes in the neighborhood in the inter-war years: foreign immigration had subsided, but the area was increasingly of interest to Americans of a creative or bohemian bent."
Ms. Wintour has lived in her house on Sullivan Street since 1992, according to an article by Melissa Klein in today's edition of The New York Post. The article also noted that Richard Gere, the actor, sold his house in the historic district for $12.8 million in 2007 and that "a home on the MacDougal Street side of the garden is currently on the market for $8.8 million."
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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