THE SCENE FROM THE STREET
Norman Buchbinder Way at Corner of West 8th and MacDougal Streets
Text and photo by Brian J Pape, AIA
This site at the southwest corner of West Eighth and MacDougal Streets, just one block north of Washington Square Park, has seen good days and bad.
Soon, a seven-story, mixed-use building with condominium residences, a community facility, and commercial space with 104 feet of storefront windows will be constructed by Empire State Contractors. Designed by Morris Adjmi Architects and developed by the Straus Group under the Clinton Eight Realty LLC, the work also includes appropriate renovations to historic 177 MacDougal Street, with designs that met Manhattan Community Board 2 and Landmarks Preservation Commission’s approval to blend in with the surrounding streetscape of prewar buildings in the Greenwich Village Historic District.
The final structure will present the façade as two distinct volumes: the corner volume is clad in light gray brick surrounding large windows in six stories of height, while next to it is a seven-story portion of red brick with wide rows of loft-like windows with dark metal frames. Each will have historic-looking cornices. From the current photo, it would be hard to guess that the reinforced concrete structure would eventually look like two separate buildings that will have a traditional look, but that is the plan.
At the southeast corner of West Eighth and MacDougal Street (left side of the photo) we find the commemorative street sign for Norman Buchbinder Way. Buchbinder (1922-2007) co-founded the Union Square Partnership, the city’s first business improvement district, that covers Union Square and 14th Street between Sixth and First Avenues. He also founded the Village Alliance business improvement district which went on to fund a major Eighth Street capital improvement project in 2001 to widen the sidewalks and add historic lampposts.
Buchbinder owned several buildings in Chelsea and managed approximately 65 buildings. He was responsible for bringing back the Eighth Street area, including MacDougal Street, from the decay it suffered during the 1970s and ‘80s. Today, we see some of the fruits of his labors, with this new development on Norman Buchbinder Way.
