Opinion

A new growth-killer

Opponents of development have come up with a new way to abuse the city’s land marking laws: A landmarked building now may be not just a one-two punch against development, but have a follow-up knockout blow.

New York University just canceled construction of a 40-story hotel/condo tower in Greenwich Village on a landmarked site that had originally called for a similar tower — and will have a fight on its hands to get anything built, even nearby.

The building was to go up by Silver Towers — a Modernist residential development designed by architect I.M. Pei and built in the mid-1960s. Pei’s original plan called for four towers, but only three exposed-concrete 30-story buildings actually got built — two for NYU faculty, the third an affordable cooperative for neighborhood residents.

To the naked eye, the superblock extending from Bleecker to Houston and LaGuardia to Mercer looks hostile. The massive buildings are far from the welcoming demeanor of most of New York City’s pre-1935 designated landmarks.

But Modernism has its (influential) fans. Architecture critic Eric P. Nash, for example, praised the “sheer, 30-story, reinforced concrete and glass towers” as “an elegant synthesis of many strains of modernist design, and at the same time express[ive of] Pei’s minimalist sculptural sensibility.” Preservationists and advocates managed to achieve landmark status for the entire development in 2008.

Landmark designation can severely constrain an owner’s ability to redevelop the property directly — a punch New Yorkers pretty much accept as the price of preserving the city’s best and most important buildings. But the second punch lands when a property owner seeking to build near or adjacent to a landmark is hampered by the presumed deleterious affect of new construction.

In this case, opponents argued that NYU’s tower would restrict light and air on the landmarked buildings. This, despite the fact that Pei’s original plan called for a tower on that spot.

But the knockout punch for NYU’s tower came from the assertive, living presence of the architect himself. Pei supported the proposal last year — but then changed his mind. He’s now urging NYU to build a denser, squatter and probably uglier building across the street, leaving his design alone.

This is the first instance in New York of a tactic recently deployed elsewhere to stymie development. In fact, Pei’s own firm was involved in a bitter multiyear battle with the congregation of the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, in Washington, DC.

The members wanted to demolish their expensive-to-maintain church — which was designed in 1971 by Pei-architect Araldo Cossutta. They triumphed last year because they were able to make a First Amendment claim in court that the Brutalist architecture conflicted with their theology. (The building still stands but the congregation has secured the right to demolish it.)

In practice, most “prestige” architects are likely to support landmarking of their buildings and oppose any new construction nearby. Thus does ego offer another convenient source of authority for promoting stasis in the development wars.

Buildings in New York become eligible for landmark designation at 30 years of age, so many modernist and post-modernist buildings are now being pushed onto the docket for preservation — some worthy, many not.

Is Silver Towers an important enough landmark to retain eternal protection not only for itself but for its surroundings? If so, let I.M. Pei step forward and explain his thinking for why NYU should build its tower elsewhere. So far, we only have his threat of opposition — enough to force NYU to back down and look for another site, but surely not enough to convince the rest of us.

If this sets a precedent by which any living architect can win landmark designation for one of the city’s hundreds of Modernist buildings and/or deters development around them, New York will find itself mired in not just the past, but the recent past — and unable to provide for the commercial and residential needs of new businesses and residents.

Julia Vitullo-Martin is director of the Regional Plan Association’s Center for Urban Innovation.