South Village Historic District

Consisting of about 250 buildings, and loosely bounded by Avenue of the Americas, West 4th Street, LaGuardia Place, and West Houston Street, this district includes row houses, tenements, commercial and institutional structures, illustrating its development from an affluent residential area in the early nineteenth century to a lively bohemian neighborhood of artists and working class immigrants in the early twentieth century. The district is well-known for the alternative and radical artistic, social and cultural communities it sustained during the twentieth century, when it also served as the center of gay and lesbian life in New York. Less well-known is that, from 1644 to 1664, free and enslaved blacks created the first black settlement in New Amsterdam in this area; although this settlement effectively ended with the English conquest, the area remained home to a substantial portion of the city's African-American population until 1910.

As one of the city's most prestigious neighborhoods during the early nineteenth century, many blocks were developed with fashionable row-houses.The oldest buildings in the South Village Historic District, Nos. 200 and 202 Bleecker Street (1825-6), still retain their Federal style paneled brownstone window lintels, marble stoops, and arched entrance enframements with keystones and incised ornament; while Nos. 125 to 131 MacDougal Street (c. 1828-9) is another relatively intact row of Federal-Style houses, with Nos. 127 to 131 still displaying their peaked roofs with double dormers, low stoops, and entrances adorned with Ionic columns.

By the mid-nineteenth century, immigrants had begun to settle in the area as affluent residents moved uptown. Many row-houses were converted to multiple dwellings, and eventually tenement houses, such as no. 169 Thompson Street (c. 1859), were constructed to accommodate the influx of residents seeking inexpensive housing. The 1879 Tenement House Act promulgated the dumbbell plan, to provide light and air through courtyards placed between the buildings. Examples of these “old-law” buildings may be found throughout the district, with a particularly notable example at 177 to 171 Bleecker Street (1887-88, by Alexander I. Finkle); their facades are enlivened with terra cotta ornament, ornate brick work, and strikingly oversized cornices.

Mills House No. 1, a model residential hotel for single workingmen, constructed at 156 Bleecker Street (1896-97) for banker-philanthropist Darius Ogden Mills, and designed by renowned architect Ernest Flagg, was enormously influential in later tenement design. Incorporating a central light court within a 100-foot wide module, in contrast with the then-standard dumbbell plan, Flagg had argued in an 1894 article in Scribner's, would provide enhanced lighting, space, ventilation, and protection from fire. This light-brick building with limestone trim, with deep copper cornice, ironwork brackets, and elaborate entrance surround topped with a pendiment, constructed using Flagg's radical floor plans, served as one of the models for future tenement design, and helped shape the provisions of the 1901 Tenement House Act.

Subway and street construction during the first decades of the twentieth century profoundly affected the area, with Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) extended south to create a right of way for a newly-approved subway line. At the same time, middle-class professionals interested in the bohemian atmosphere of the Village were attracted to the area; from 1920 to 1930, property values increased between 40 and 160 percent, converting the area into a solidly middle-class neighborhood. After World War II, a number of existing buildings (including Mills House No. 1) were converted to condominiums.

The neighborhood has also been affected dramatically by construction undertaken by New York University, founded in 1831. The University's first building in the district was the Collegiate Gothic Revival-style University Building (100 Washington Square, 1833-35, now demolished), now the site of the Main Building designed by Alfred Zucker (1892-95). Other NYU buildings within the district include the neo-Georgian red brick Vanderbilt Hall, designed by Eggers & Higgins for the law school, and completed in 1951; the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies (50 Washington Square South, 1969-72, Philip Johnson and Richard Foster), a modern five-story dark granite structure; the Filomen D'Agostino Residence Hall at 110 West 3rd Street (1983-87, Benjamin Thompson Architects), and Wilf Hall (2010-11, Morris Adjimi Architects), at 139 MacDougal Street. ©2014