The Landmarks Preservation Commission today held a hearing on the proposed landmark designation of the three, thirty-story apartment towers designed by I. M. Pei at 505 LaGuardia Place and 100 and 110 Bleecker Street, a complex that was originally known as University Village.

They were built in 1966 by New York University, which now refers to them as Silver Towers as they were named to honor Julius Silver, a philanthropist. The Bleecker Street towers house faculty members and the third tower is a cooperative apartment building. The three towers surround a large sculpture by Pablo Picasso in a plaza and they are on the north side of Houston Street between West Broadway and Mercer Streets.

Lynne P. Brown, senior vice president of University Relations and Public Affairs, told the commission today that the university supports the designation of the towers, but added that "outside the Landmark site is NYU's Coles athletic facility, built in 1980, and the site of the Morton-Williams grocery store, which NYU acquired in 2000 with the stated intention of eventually developing a new building on that site."

She added, however, that "the design team has recommended for NYU's consideration that we not build on the Morton-William site but instead construct a 4th tower on the northwest corner of the proposed landmark site."

The university recently announced an agreement with locally elected officials and community groups on principles for a planned expansion of 6 million square feet over the next 25 years.

Subsequently, it disclosed details of some of the expansion plans under consideration including filling in much of the open spaces of two major and famous "tower-in-the-park" housing complexes it owns on "superblocks" south of Washington Square Park: University Village and Washington Square Village, which consists of two very long and handsome slab apartment buildings with colorful facades and sculptural roof elements designed by Paul Lester Weiner in association with S. J. Kessler & Sons in 1960.

A university document discussed "filling in the superblock" and presented three "concepts" that would insert new academic and residential buildings between the two Washington Square Village buildings and "attempts to utilize them as a 'buffer' between the new development and the surrounding area."

A rendering shown at today's meeting indicated that the proposed new tower at Silvers Towers would be about 40 stories high.

Pei's plan "creates one of the quintessential modernist spaces in New York: open and two-dimensional, but with the urban fabric around it clearly acknowledged and interwoven, as the surrounding streets flow through it as walkways," declared Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.

Mr. Berman said that the designation should also include the two low-rise buildings on the superblock that are not presented included in the application. "While neither were designed by Pei and each were built separately, the complex's design clearly envisioned the remainder of the superblock as low and horizontal, neutral and deferential to the main composition of the three towers and the spaces that flow through and around them. The supermarket building and gym, while not individually distinguished, support this design in their basic placement and their horizontal orientation, and thus should be included in the designation and treated as 'non-contributing' structures."

City Councilman Alan Gerson spoke in support of designation but also urged the commission's staff to "pay full heed and attention" to the Washington Square Village "sister superblock" - "the two really go together."

Community Board 2 recommended that the commission designated the entire "Silver Towers" superblock "as a whole" as did Susannah C. Drake of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Landscape Architects.