The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously this afternoon to designate Silver Towers complex, designed by James Ingo Freed of I. M. Pei & Associates and formerly known as University Village and its 36-foot-high 1968 plaza sculpture, "Portrait of Sylvette," by Carl Nesjar, a Norwegian sculptor based on a 1954 maquette by Pablo Picasso, as a landmark.

Silver Towers is the first post-war urban renewal superblock development in New York City to be landmarked. While such urban renewal projects rarely receive high marks for design, Silver Towers is considered a watershed design for one of the late 20th century's most respected and influential architects. The design won awards from the American Institute of Architects and the City Club, was dubbed "one of ten buildings that climax an era" by Fortune Magazine, and was cited as a basis for which Pei received the 1983 Pritzker Prize - the most prestigious award for architects - for his body of work up to that time.

The designation was first proposed by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation in 2003. The project consists of three 30-story residential towers north of Houston Street and east of West Broadway. New York University owns the land under the five-acre complex that includes a cooperative residential building, a building to house faculty and a moderate-income housing building.

Last June, the university unveiled a modified expansion plan that called for added a 40-story tower to the site, as shown in the illustration here, although it said it supported the designation of the three existing towers. According to the society, the commission's designation report "acknowledges the importance of the open space as integral to the design, thus making their required approval of construction of a tower in this area by the LPC in the future highly unlikely."

NYU also wants to build more buildings in the adjacent superblock containing Washington Square Village. Both are among the finest examples of "tower-in-a-park" urban planning in the United States. Washington Square Village 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.

Andrew Berman, executive director of the society, issued a statement after the commission made the designation, in which he said that the complex "is an icon of 20th Century design we fought very hard to preserve," adding that "Plans to build additional towers on the complex could have ruined the design, and we are deeply gratified that today's vote helps ensure that will never happen."

The three designated towers at 505 LaGuardia Place and 100 and 110 Bleecker Street were built in 1967 and are named after Julius Silver, a philanthropist. The Silver Towers used reinforced concrete as did two prior important residential complexes designed by the Pei firm: Society Hill Towers in Philadelphia in 1963 and Kips Bay Plaza in Midtown East in Manhattan in 1964.

At the commission's June 24, 2008 hearing on the proposed designation, Lynne P. Brown, senior vice president of University Relations and Public Affairs, told the commission 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...that we not build on the Morton-William site but instead construct a 4th tower on the northwest corner...."

Commissioner Stephen Bryns said that the Silver Towers complex was "a very, very fine complex" notable for its deeply recessed windows and Commissioner Roberta Brandes Gratz remarked that they "never should have been built but at least we got something good in return."