Westbeth Past Campaign Updates
Victory! Westbeth 5G Tower Dumped, But New Proposal Emerges on Horatio Street
Good news!: As we predicted, plans are being withdrawn for a 32-ft.-tall metallic 5G tower at 445 West Street adjacent to Westbeth following our advocacy campaign to have it rejected based upon the required historic preservation review. This is a tremendous victory for our efforts, and shows that this process, to which Village Preservation has been named a “consulting party,” can effect necessary and positive change. Thank you to the scores of you who heeded our call and also wrote!
Our efforts continue to get plans rejected for proposed towers at 771 Greenwich/99 Bank Streets and 184 East 7th Street. However, as expected, another proposal for a new 32-ft.-tall 5G tower has been filed for 100 Horatio Street (west of Washington Street) in the Far West Village. We have called for the site to be rejected based upon its proximity to the Gansevoort Market Historic District, the Greenwich Village Historic District, and the individually landmarked 110-112 Horatio Street. We continue to monitor for new filings in our neighborhoods, and will notify the public whenever one is filed that we believe should be found to have negative impacts upon historic resources.
TO HELP:
5G Tower Victory at Westbeth, but Next Tower Proposed Just Two Blocks Away
We’ve got some good news, and some bad news. The good news: Following our submission opposing the proposed 32-ft.-tall 5G tower at 445 West Street in front of Westbeth, the New York State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) has also come out against siting a 5G tower here, and has called for it to be removed. Most of the SHPO’s recommendations as part of this historic preservation review process have been followed, so we are extremely optimistic that this particular tower will not go ahead at this site. Thank you to the SHPO and the scores of you who heeded our call and sent letters in opposition.
The bad news: An application has now been submitted for another tower just two blocks away at 771 Greenwich Street, aka 99 Bank Street. The proposed 32-ft.-tall tower would be just as inappropriate here, and we have similarly submitted testimony (read it HERE) for the historic preservation review opposing the proposed siting. We urge you to do the same.
We will continue to monitor for all such 32-ft.-tall 5G tower applications in our neighborhood, and utilize the historic preservation review process for which we are a consulting party to oppose all those that negatively impact historic resources.
TO HELP:
Pushing Back on Locations for 32-ft.-tall 5G Towers in the East and West Villages
Village Preservation continues to fight plans to site oversized and unnecessary 32-ft.-tall towers on sidewalks in our neighborhoods to house equipment for future 5G service. In many cases these are planned for narrow sidewalks where the enormous towers will be mere feet from residential windows. Village Preservation has been granted “consulting party” status for the state’s historic preservation review of these towers, and through this process we have been vigorously fighting those that bump up against historic preservation requirements.
Hundreds of these 5G towers are planned throughout the city, including many in our neighborhoods. The location of only a fraction of those to be proposed have been released, and the review process for each one begins on a separate, rolling basis — a seemingly deliberately confusing and difficult-to-navigate system. Currently, a clump has been proposed for the Far West Village and around Tompkins Square Park, though only a small number have begun the review process allowing for comments. This includes one proposed for 445 West Street at Bank Street next to Westbeth, and one at 184 East 7th Street at Avenue B, across from Tompkins Square.
Both would violate historic preservation protections by negatively impacting historic resources in our neighborhoods, and we have urged these sites be rejected — read our letters re 445 West Street and re 184 East 7th Street. The public can also urge that these sites be rejected, and we strongly encourage you to do so.
TO HELP:
Village Preservation is closely monitoring these plans and will continue to oppose 5G towers in our neighborhoods that would negatively impact historic resources, and notify the public as to how they can do the same.
New Oral History: Westbeth Artist Christina Maile
We’re honored to share our latest oral history with printmaker, painter, landscape architect and author Christina Maile. Christina has lived at Westbeth for over half a century, and co-founded the Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective. Her work has shown at the Brooklyn Museum and International Print Center, and often explores her Trinidadian and Malaysian heritage, landscapes, and gender. In her oral history with Village Preservation, Christina discusses extensively how she came to Westbeth in the early 1970s from Brooklyn by way of Michigan, and how the West Village artists’ complex nurtured her growth as a fine artist.
Christina was part of a recent artists’ panel sponsored by Village Preservation at the Westbeth Gallery Winter Show.
This latest oral history adds to our collection of over 60, with preservationists like Jane Jacobs and Margot Gayle; merchants like the Strand’s Fred Bass and Romana Raffetto of Raffetto’s; choreographers like Merce Cunningham; activists like CHARAS’s Chino Garcia and Fran Goldin; playwrights like John Guare and Virlana Tkacz; photographers like Marlis Momber; writers like Calvin Trillin and Mimi Sheraton; filmmakers like Jonas Mekas; musicians like David Amram; and performance artists like Penny Arcade.
Look At All We’ve Accomplished!
With an increasing flood of awful proposals coming out of City Hall in the dying days of the de Blasio Administration, it’s easy to forget all we’ve accomplished together over the years: earning landmark and zoning protections for our neighborhoods, saving historic landmarks from demolition, stopping destructive development proposals, and stopping or improving terrible plans by the City or developers.
That’s why we’ve created a new and improved Accomplishments StoryMap, showing all that you — our members and supporters — have enabled us to do over the years. You’ll see everything from huge landmark or zoning protections covering hundreds of buildings to tiny houses saved from demolition and small but critical restoration projects.
In Memoriam: African American Artists of Westbeth
It was a project like no other before. The first subsidized housing for artists in the United States, offering affordable housing and work space in New York City, Westbeth is a large scale adaptive reuse of an industrial building for both artistic and residential purposes. And it celebrates 50 years of life this year. Read…
New Oral History Celebrating Westbeth’s 50th Anniversary — Puppeteer Ralph Lee, “Father” of the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade
Puppeteer and theater artist Ralph Lee has lived in Westbeth since its opening in 1970. A veteran of The Open Theatre and LaMaMa Etc., among Ralph’s many claims to fame are founding the Village Halloween Parade in 1974, which began as a small community event in the Westbeth courtyard, but which grew to one of the largest events in New York and one of the largest parades in the country. Lee was the parade’s director from 1974 to 1985, and director of the Mettawee River Theatre Company for over four decades starting in 1976. In his oral history Ralph discusses his range of work expanding the boundaries of art, theater, and community, as well as a half century living at Westbeth.
Read or Listen to Ralph Lee’s Oral History HERE
Ralph Lee’s oral history is one of fifty Village Preservation oral histories with great artists, preservationists, activists, and business owners in our community, and part of our Westbeth Oral History collection. Find out more about Westbeth’s amazing history and legacy here.
Westbeth Turns 50!
On May 19, 1970, a project like no other ever imagined or realized before opened its doors on the corner of West and Bethune Streets. Westbeth was the first large scale adaptive reuse of an industrial building for residential purposes, and the first subsidized housing for artists in the United States. It took an abandoned 13-building complex constructed between the 1860s and the 1930s — the former Bell Telephone Labs (itself an incredible center of innovation in sound technology over the years, where the radio tube, the “talkie,” the vacuum tube, the transatlantic telephone, among others, were invented) — and turned them into affordable permanent housing and workspace for hundreds of artists, as well as space for arts and cultural organizations, including the Merce Cunningham and Martha Graham Dance Studios, a theater for the New School, an art gallery, and even space for Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the world’s largest LGBT synagogue. This was all done to the innovative designs of a young then-unknown architect named Richard Meier, who created 383 apartments, each unique and different from one another, and with a groundbreaking partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the J.M. Kaplan Fund.
| Village Preservation has long had a close working relationship with Westbeth, with whom we have partnered on many projects and programs over the years. This includes successfully nominating Westbeth for the State and National Register of Historic Places in 2010, our Westbeth Oral History project, our first-of-its-kind Westbeth artists loft tour (all supported by grants from the J.M. Kaplan Fund), proposing and securing landmark status for the complex in 2011, and unveiling a historic plaque on the complex in 2018. |
Westbeth Plaque Unveiled
| On Tuesday, Village Preservation unveiled our thirteenth historic plaque at Westbeth – watch the video here and see pictures here. The Westbeth complex, located between West, Bethune, Washington and Bank Streets, consists of thirteen buildings constructed between the 1860s and 1930s, most originally for Bell Telephone Labs. Some of the most important innovations in sound technology were developed or advanced there, including radar, the first talking movies, television, and video telephones. In 1966 Bell left the West Village, and the complex was reimagined as housing and workspace for artists, in one of the first examples of large-scale adaptive re-use of an industrial building for residential purposes, and one of the first examples of publicly subsidized housing for artists. Village Preservation was proud to honor and highlight this remarkable history. Past plaques have marked the former homes of James Baldwin, Elizabeth Blackwell, Lorraine Hansberry, Frank O’Hara, Martha Graham, The Fillmore East, the San Remo Café, and many more. Learn more about all of our historic plaques here, or explore them all by map below. |