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What's a landmark? New Yorkers struggle to agree

By David Freedlander, amNewYork Staff Writer
More stories | dfreedlander@am-ny.com

February 12, 2008

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has designated I.M. Pei's Silver Towers complex which contains the Picasso sculpture "Sylvette" for landmark status. The three buildings and accompanying Picasso scultpure run along Houston Steet between LaGuardia Place and Broadway in Manhattan. (RJ Mickelson / February 11, 2008)

When New Yorkers talk about landmarking, they often think of genteel townhouses on tree-lined streets or distinguished cast-iron buildings. But concrete high-rises built in the 1960s?

Tuesday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission is expected to schedule hearings on preserving I.M. Pei's Silver Towers, a modernist courtyard of concrete high-rises that towers above Greenwich Village.

"Even though this tower in the park superblock model was for the most part a failure, this was one of the most sensitive and well-designed ones," said Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which has pushed for protecting the structures for five years. "The complex weaves itself more sensitively into the neighborhood than most, and it is one of the few superblocks in the country designed by one of the greatest architects of his era."

Berman also noted that the complex is centered around a sculpture by Pablo Picasso, one of only two pieces of public art by the artist in North America.

Silver Towers was completed in 1966 as part of a slum-clearance program by master city builder Robert Moses. The project was intended to provide housing for just New York University students and staff, but in the face of community opposition, the university included middle-income units for local residents.

Buildings are eligible for landmarking 30 years after they are completed, which means that many pieces of modernist architecture are now coming before the commission. But many urbanists argue that much of the era's architecture was a mistake, and landmarking it would force the city to preserve what never should have been built in the first place.

"Silver Towers destroyed the Manhattan street grid and did so deliberately," said Julia Vitullo-Martin, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. "We probably should be rethinking landmarking if the city is going to landmark these kinds of developments. If you stood in front of Silver Towers and asked people walking by if it should be in the same category of Grand Central Station, I am sure they would say no."

The word on the street, though, was inconclusive.

"A landmark is something that was built years ago, that is historical," said a longtime local resident who would only give her name as Dorothy. She added that she has lived in tenements in the neighborhood "for 80 years."

"They look presentable enough, sure, but what were they built, 30, 40, years ago? That doesn't sound like a landmark to me."

But Stephane Gerson, 40, a professor of French cultural history at New York University, and a resident of Silver Towers, disagreed.

"People may have different aesthetic tastes, but they are representative of the implementation of certain urban policies in New York City. And the interiors are extremely well-designed."

Architectural historians tended to agree.

"It represents a view of the city that has been discredited, but it is one of the great examples of that idea," said Edward R. Ford, author of "The Details of Modern Architecture." "I wouldn't want all of lower Manhattan to be that way, but a little fragment of it is good."