April 20, 2004

Statement of the Historic Districts Council
Before the Landmarks Preservation Commission

Re: Designation of the Federal houses at 127, 129, and 131 MacDougal Street, Manhattan

The Historic Districts Council is the city-wide advocate for New York City’s historic districts and for neighborhoods meriting preservation. HDC is very pleased to have the opportunity to testify in support of the proposed designation of the Federal Houses at 127, 129, and 131 MacDougal Street.

The Historic Districts Council is happy to support the designation of this striking group of three Federal houses and hopes that this is only the first in the series of designations of such buildings that we, like other preservation organizations, have long been advocating.

Federal houses are not merely charming survivors, they are, as authors like Talbot Hamlin long ago pointed out, monuments of the first truly American architectural style—one that was seen as continuing the Classical tradition in an independent form embodying the then-prized “republican virtue” and simplicity and free of the “aristocratic pomp” associated with a Europe seen as despotic and corrupt. They are thus participating witnesses to the formative period of the United States. As Hamlin also points out, each important coastal city had its own subtype of Federal house, and so the surviving examples are also special witnesses to the history and originality of New York. Yet they are no longer very common in the areas of the city where once they flourished, they vanish week by week, and they certainly aren’t making them any more.

Walking down MacDougal Street from Washington Square has since early in the 20th Century been a favored route for those wishing to penetrate to the “real Village’ represented by the bars, cafes, restaurants and theaters clustered in the low-built streets to the south. Indeed, the erection by New York University of a wall of tall buildings shadowing Washington Square, cutting off the South Village from the streets to the north, and threatening even further out-of-scale development nearby, seems to have left it as almost the only viable way. Along and near this street are many witnesses to the various pasts of Greenwich Village, and the row of which the three houses before you are the center is prominent as the very first. Probably this explains the early calendaring in 1966—but not the failure to designate.

Although these three houses have all been altered in various ways, they maintain the unity of the original row and the shape and feel of typical Federal row houses: two brick stories that are three bays wide above a low stone basement behind a simple iron post-and-rail fence, and with a short flight of steps with simple iron railings rising to a shallow stoop. The shape of the recessed door surrounds is intact, as are the molded cap lintels, together with the rare survival of all three door hoods in the same form. The brick façades, of patched Flemish bond visible through layers of peeling paint, are topped with relatively plain molded cornices and pitched roofs with dormers.

The details are preserved in varying degrees in each house: 129 has kept the pineapple-topped newel posts on the stair railing and the delicate wooden Ionic columns on each side of the door; 131 has a clearly altered version of the door enframement and six-over-nine windows; at 127 the dividers between the first-floor windows have survived the installation of shop windows. One alteration is almost iconic of the Village: the similar studio windows, created by throwing together the original two dormers on each pitched roof, that herald the “artistic” character traditionally associated with this area in particular and represent an important aspect of its historic development. The strength of this row is indeed in the whole.

In fact this row is bookended by structures that set off and reinforce its character. To the south number 125, although its different floor levels suggest it was never properly part of the row, still shows an almost identical Federal typology, with the same types of lintel and stoop, even though the main floor has been utterly stripped and a mansard added above a third floor identical to the second. Such a third floor is a frequent type of addition if indeed it is not original to the structure. To the north at 141 is the original Provincetown Theater famous for its association with Eugene O’Neill and other playwrights of the creative Twenties of the last century that inalterably sealed the creative fame of the Village. To be sure, the theater is clad in brick from a 1932 alteration that attempted to engulf it in a new apartment house, but the marquee has survived to proclaim its famous and continuing cultural identity. These two buildings, if they were added to the designated row on some basis, would indeed ensure preservation of a significant

We could continue to recommend sites on MacDougal Street that embody aspects of Village history like the vernacular brick double house nearby at numbers 130-132 dating from 1852 with its fine, now-rare ironwork portico that brings out a new aspect of the past, or else to list Federal houses that struggle to survive in such areas as the East Village. Indeed, these areas and structures are now in a race for time against two adversaries: against the threat of major out-of-scale development from such bulldozing sources as NYU in the South Village and against the defacing alterations that typically accompany the first stages of ethnic or group succession in an area where prosperity is bringing new populations unacquainted with the history of the area and the potential value of its traditional architecture. The Landmark Preservation Commission must continue the work of designation in these areas. But we shall be happy for now if this row of Village Federals is designated and we can regard them as the earnest of more to come.