The West Village Houses are a collection of 42 walk-up buildings in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

West Village The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The traditional boundaries of the West Village are the Hudson River to the west, 14th Street (Manhattan ...

that contain 420 apartments. They were built with the support of New York City and New York State through its Mitchell-Lama Housing Program. They were championed by

Jane Jacobs Jane Jacobs (''née'' Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book '' The Death and Life of Great American Cities ...

and intended to be built on a human scale in keeping with her ideals.

History

The houses are scattered in an area bounded by Morton, West,

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and

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Streets. In 1961, New York Mayor

Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

planned to redevelop that area with high rise housing. West Village resident Jane Jacobs led an effort to stop that development in favor of the West Village Houses which were smaller-scale and preserved existing structures. Perkins and Will designed the buildings. The effort to build the houses was finally approved in 1969, higher costs required a second approval in 1972 and then construction began. Because of their long construction during a period of high inflation, when they were completed in 1975 common charges for prospective residents were high, they had difficulty finding residents and required further subsidy. In 2002 the owner of the property, the Island Capital Group, indicated that it might like to buy out of the Mitchell-Lama Program and convert the units to market rate. The Bloomberg administration worked out an arrangement to sell the units to the tenants but preserve affordability for those who wanted to continue to rent. The tax abatements that facilitated this conversion expire in 2018 and in November 2017 developer Madison Equities offered to purchase the properties and redevelop them as high rises.

References

{{coord, 40, 44, 02.4, N, 74, 00, 30.8, W, display=title Housing in New York City Multi-building developments in New York City Redevelopment projects in the United States Residential buildings in Manhattan West Village