79. MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens Historic District

Location: 74-76 MacDougal Street and 170-188 Sullivan Street
Built: 1844 (MacDougal side) and 1850 (Sullivan side); extensively remodeled in 1920
Architects: Unknown; remodeled by Francis Y. Joannes and Maxwell Hyde
National Register Number: 83001736
Listed: June 30, 1983
Visited: June 1, 2008
Additional Information: LPC Landmark Designation Report



A quick jaunt to the outskirts of Greenwich Village before we head back down to SoHo and the Civic Center.

These twenty-two row houses are smoove, as fresh and dewy and uniform in appearance as a newborn set of quints. There are few small differences for variety's sake. For example, the Sullivans' ground entrances are alternately topped with arches or ironwork; except for the left- and right-most ones, the MacDougals have paired first floor windows (originally entrances) with either lintels or fanned arches. And then there are the unusually vivid colors: some blacks, grays, and reds, but several blues, and with 180 Sullivan, a yellow. That all said, the continuous heights of lintels, sills, cornices make this district two real rows of row houses.



A key reason why these rows maintained their relative homogeneity is due to their continuous chain of ownership, staying in the hands of Nicholas Low and his descendants from 1796, when Greenwich Village was really just a village, to 1920, when it was the bohemian enclave of universal reputation. They were purchased by the Hearth and Home real estate company, owned by William Sloane Coffin (father of William Sloan Coffin Jr.). Instead of tearing them down and building bigger as would be customary for those days, the company remodeled them to provide attractive housing for the middle class and a communal--but private--garden in the space between the two properties. This makes MacDougal-Sullivan is not just an important specimen of New York City architecture, but a pioneering example of both historic preservation and block greening.

Today, the middle class couldn't afford squat here--recent residents include Debra Perelman, Anna Wintour and Richard Gere. (Edgar Varèse and Bob Dylan also lived here, decades ago.) Gere's house went for an insane $12 million last year. $12 million!

78b. Charlton-King-Vandam Historic District

Location: Roughly bounded by Varick, Vandam, MacDougal and King Streets
Built: Mostly the early to mid-1820s
Architects: Multiple
National Register Number: 73001215
Listed: July 20, 1973
Visited: June 1, 2008



With Richmond Hill out of the way, and the hill it sat upon leveled, John Jacob Astor set about developing Aaron Burr's old estate. He divided up the land and sold it off to builders who then filled it with the Federal style row houses then multiplying virally throughout the city to meet the growing city's housing needs.



Their constructors were multiple; their dates of construction, all throughout the early and mid-1820s. A few Charlton Street homes were felled by fire in 1840 and replaced by Greek Revival buildings. Others were replaced with larger interlopers, including a sizable Queen Anne school on King Street. Many buildings--including a hair-raising five addresses on both sides of Charlton--were demolished for various transportation schemes, including the widening of Sixth Avenue and the construction of the IND subway line: the blankness of walls facing Sixth Avenue serve as mute testament to missing neighbors. And yet the district is relatively homogeneous. Heights and features are frequently matched from building to building. It has a recognizable feel: small and residential and somewhat quiet.




It also feels rather dead. The streets are lined with cars, people walk out from time to time with laundry, but once again, there are these little details, like another dead Christmas wreath, that makes me wonder if anybody lives in these places. The white-noise from air-conditioning in Varick Street buildings--this on a Sunday, mind--overpowers most audible signs of life.

The premier reference book for New York City row houses, Bricks and Brownstones, describes the Federal row house in almost Tocquevillean terms. They were occupied by the "builders, lawyers, and merchants" (both B&B and the NYCLPC report uses the same phrase, hmm...) that were getting rich from the city's growing power as a port, a market, a manufacturer--yet both social attitudes and economic conditions conspire to keep most homes built in this period spare in detail and modest in scale:

"This handsome simplicity of the Federal style showed that the Classical ideals of architectural restraint were influential then, that the high cost of hand labor made elaborate architectural forms and details too costly except for the finest houses, and that social customs in New York did not yet demand a pretentious dwelling."

I'm going to guess that nowadays these homes' seductiveness as tokens of old New York make them more and more expensive than they were when they were built. Knowing the way New York is today, they can be only be owned by a certain social class who probably treat them as weekday pied-à-terres at best. They may own the houses but they don't live here--but then they don't live anywhere, per se. Maybe. Don't hold me to that.

77. House at 203 Prince Street

Location: 203 Prince Street
Built: 1833-34
Architects: Unknown
National Register Number: 83001731
Listed: May 26, 1983
Visited: June 1, 2008



203 is considered to be designed in a "transitional" style that borrows elements of Federal buildings James Brown House or 83-85 Sullivan and later Greek Revival ones. It sure seems a little showier, a little more genteel than those two, but apart from the interior, which I obviously can't view, documentation on the building cites the main Greek Revival elements as the cap moldings on the moldings--so this building distinguishes itself from other Federal Style buildings in ways that are totally lost on an uneducated doof like myself. Sure is nice, though. It immediately registers as a home in a way the others don't: blinds may be drawn, but there are stained glass pieces in some of the window panes.

Aaron Burr had a mansion round these parts, and its gateway stood where 203 now is. We'll get to the mansion next week when I cover the Charlton-King-Vandam district. But it summons the delicious sci-fi idea that on this land, maybe even inside this house, the gateway still stands, a portal to the ghost New York City that lives unseen alongside the New York City we can sense.

Oh hey, it's my birthday.