BY BETSY HUMES | Carey Vennema died peacefully in his home in the West Village on July 24, surrounded by his family. He was 93.
Vennema was an iconic Village character, recognized by his wild head of hair as he sped along the neighborhood’s streets on his three-speed bicycle, legal briefs strapped into the child seat. An eccentric intellectual activist, he found his calling in community engagement to protect the artistic, offbeat and tolerant West Village where he made his home.
He was born March 18, 1921, to Mildred Carey and Augustus Whiton Vennema in Passaic, N.J.
He attended the Passaic Collegiate School, and graduated from the Choate School and Amherst College. He received his law degree from New York University School of Law in 1958.
Vennema was a World War II veteran, having trained in the French-speaking cryptologic unit of the U.S. Army.
During law school, he met Mary Holly Webb, then a student at Union Theological Seminary, and the two married in 1956 and lived together in Greenwich Village.
Following law school, he became involved with numerous West Village civic organizations. Evicted from his brownstone apartment on Charles St., which was razed to make way for an apartment building, he understood first-hand the threats facing his neighborhood during that era: Real estate development, rising rents and urban renewal projects were causing the disappearance of the bohemian lifestyle and the marginalization of the artistic community.
To combat the relentless pressure from real estate developers, he joined Save the Village. Working with Ed Koch on the group’s Attorneys Committee, Vennema passionately pushed the organization’s agenda to fight evictions, seek rent protection and lobby for legislative and zoning amendments to preserve the architecture and character of the Village.
As Robert Moses targeted the Village and surrounding neighborhoods for urban renewal, Vennema worked with Jane Jacobs to defend the streets and blocks of the Village through grassroots efforts, mobilizing the expertise of local residents — from engineers to politicians to real estate agents. Vennema and his colleagues meticulously surveyed the area to document house, street and block conditions, and also used demographic information about residents to refute claims of urban blight in their neighborhood. His innovative use of tax records to disprove claims of urban blight was later recognized by Jane Jacobs as a key strategy to vanquishing Robert Moses’ plan to demolish large swaths of the Village.
Seeking to maintain the Village’s bohemian culture, Vennema worked with Carol Greitzer as treasurer of the Committee for Artist Housing. He served as the lead attorney for the group, securing support of local assemblymembers and the Department of Buildings to amend the building code to allow artists to live legally in their studios. This amendment resulted in the initial conversion project at 799 Greenwich St., which served as a blueprint for artist housing at Westbeth and later, Soho and Tribeca.
On April 29, 1969, 10 years after the establishment of Save the Village, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission made the groundbreaking decision to declare a 65-block area of Greenwich Village a historic district, the largest of its kind in the United States, and the prototype for other neighborhoods, such as Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope and others across the country, preserving historic neighborhoods for future generations.
Putting his expertise in zoning to service for his beloved summer community on Swan’s Island, Maine, Vennema worked with the island’s selectmen to draft the first Shoreland Zoning Ordinance and Clam Ordinance to preserve and protect the island’s natural resources.
He is survived by his wife of 58 years, Holly; his children, Amy Vennema and Betsy Humes, of Park Slope, Brooklyn, Willa Vennema, of Portland, Maine, and Kenneth Vennema, of Sugar Land, Texas; 10 grandchildren and an extended family of loving in-laws.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Elder Care Outreach of Swan’s Island c/o Donna Wiegel.
