To: The editors of The New York Times Re: "A Few Signs Of Spring Downtown," NYT, March

17, 2013 Sirs: As a longtime resident of the West Village and, as well, a longtime reader of The New York Times, I am appalled by a feature that appeared on the front page of the Real Estate section of The Times on March 17, 2013, under the headline: " A Few Signs Of Spring Downtown." "Spring" indeed, as in "Springtime For Hitler," but without the irony. The story was about two residential buildings, one in Tribeca, about which I care not at all, and one in the West Village, the extremely clunky hunk of oversized, disproportionate (even hostile) ugliness, known in its latest re-naming as "150 Charles Street." Seen from West 10th and Washington Streets, the building would look like this:

Signs of Spring in the West Village, indeed.

1. Much is known about the site after the first Europeans "discovered" Manhattan Island; the accepted year of the first Dutch explorer/colonists/merchants arrival-for-business is 1609. According to the excellent Welikia Project, and its block-by-block history of Manhattan, we know that, in 1609, the block described as "10th St. and Charles St. between Washington St. & West St." was a "wild place," and this is what its swampy western edge would have looked liked from the Hudson River:

Welikia gives the block a very low probability/suitability for human habitation, and estimates that the nearest encampment of the Lenape/Delaware people would have been 778 meters inland; the nearest trail was about 700 meters to the east. (The vast area known to anthropologists as the Northeastern Woodlands, which included present day New York City, had been continually inhabited for 3,000 years.) Clearly, it seems the locals had come up with good reasons to live no closer than a half a mile from the water. By the mid18th century, "the bucolic village of Greenwich, now owned and operated by the British, became a collection of tobacco farms--tobacco was the cash crop of the era--well irrigated by streams and creeks flowing into the Hudson. In 1797 the marshy farmland was filled and fortified to accommodate Newgate Prison, New York State's first penitentiary. When one was sent "up the river," one was sent from the courthouse on Wall Street by sailboat to the Christopher Street dock, and perp-walked one short block north to Newgate, the earliest luxury housing at what is now intended to become "150 Charles Street." Newgate Prison, the latest in luxury incarceration concepts, even had an indoor pool, just like its proposed spiritual descendent! Voil Newgate in bucolic Greenwich Village: But the nabe became so popular that in 20 years Newgate itself was closed and its residents sent 40 miles further "up the river" to the brand new crown jewel of the state's prison system, Sing Sing.

After much changing of ownership, in 1878 the site became home to the Empire Brewery. This is what the brewery, which closed upon the advent of Prohibition in 1930, looked like, at 287 West 10th Street:

2. By 1937, the brewery had been demolished and replaced by the three-story Whitehall Storage building, seen here from Charles Street,

which was supposed to be "converted" with many pathetic promises of preservation by the developers, into a residential super-luxury building that would keep"'the texture and human scale of the neighborhood," according to Rick Cook, its architect. He continues: "We knew that we wanted this building to make for the perfect street space on a perfect West Village Street"' Huh? The human-scaled behemoth was to be known as the Watershed, with its very own waterfalls; but because it resembled 'a huge love seat facing the Hudson River,' it was cynically labeled by the real-state blognycurbed.com , "The Waterbed." All watery-sounding names were (somewhat prophetically?) abandoned before the waters of the Hudson River came pouring through and over the ground during the surge of the great storm Sandy: The flooding was calamitous, not just to the actual site, as seen above, but to the structures between it and the river, also as seen above. In fact, the first--and thus far only--building in Manhattan to be ordered demolished was 401 West Street, which backs onto the site of the building formerly known as the Watershed; needless to say, the occupants of the doomed West Street building are suing the builders of "150 Charles Street" for failing to secure barriers against the ever-looming Hudson. Read all about it here. (One would have hoped that The New York Times reporter, Alexi Barrionuevo, who was made giddy by all the blossoming crocuses and concrete he

spotted "Downtown," had mentioned this historic event in his worshipful piece of March 17th. Alas, he did not seem to notice it.)

Would that this lawsuit were the only one facing the builders of "150 Charles Street." There is, in fact, so much litigation swirling that the project is referred to in the local real-estate press as "troubled," "unfortunate," "mysterious," and, in a headline in Curbed.com of December 6, 2012, " Neighbor-Hated." The Homeric adjectival epithet, "neighbor-hated," also makes its way into the body of stories about the thing, as in this, from Curbed.com , by Jessica Dailey, dated March 25, 2013:"'Neighbor-hated West Village condo is still a long way from completion, but the project is making sure it stays in the news."

3. And indeed it is kept in the news, with breathless claims of ever-growing numbers of units sold, and the amount of dollars being taken in by the builders. Plus there are similarly awestruck quotes from an actual salesman for the property, as reported by The New York Times: '''We have had close to 350 showings in a little over three weeks,' Leonard Steinberg, a broker at Douglas Elliman gushed during a tour of the sales center last week. 'This is a real estate dream come true.''' Barrionuevo was no stranger to the gush himself: "The numbers their sales teams revealed this week are truly surprising. At 150 Charles signed contracts have exceeded $557 million in about a month." Impressive, I'd say. That's a lot of gushing about a building that won't be ready for occupancy, according to optimistic estimates by brokers and builders, before 2015. The presumption is that the coming autumn will come and go without a storm to follow up 2011's Irene, and 2012's Sandy. (According to an water engineer working for owners of adjacent properties, the site of 150 Charles Street is extremely vulnerable to an incoming Hudson--but that's only if you believe scientists who say that our climate is changing, as opposed to those who cite the Bible to demonstrate that it's not.) And guess who's buying? '''West Village residents have dominated the early sales,' brokers said," according to The Times. The builder of record, one Mr. Steven Witkoff added, '''We don't have any global buyers. We didn't get the L.A. crowd. We didn't get the pied--terre crowd. This went to New Yorkers that [sic] wanted to live there with their families."' Yes. Of course. Silly me. Among those people on the elevator with me, who order food from the Golden Wok and wait in line at Rite Aid, are a bunch of ordinary-looking neighbors who've supposedly put half a billion dollars into a "troubled" hole in the ground. To quote reporter Barrionuevo again, "Sales velocity at 150 Charles has stunned all involved and created a mad scramble to adjust to the demand." I suppose I'm so stunned that I hadn't noticed the mad scramble just across the street; or, my gaze was diverted to an actual mad scramble to demolish Manhattan's first victim of the surge of Sandy, so that work on "150 Charles" can proceed. Speaking of mad scrambles by residents of

the West Village eager to own a piece of "150 Charles Street," a front page story in The New York Times, of April 2, 2013, rang a bell. It was headlined "A Slice Of London So Exclusive That Even The Owners Are Visitors"' The "slice" of London was Belgravia, the very most expensive area in one of the world's most expensive cities, a neighborhood now known by some as "lights out London," because of the many uninhabited Belgravia residences owned by super-rich non-residents, who rarely inhabit their London "homes." Come to think of it, 165 Charles Street, the southern-most of the shiny river-facing Meier triplets, just north of 150 Charles Street (open for occupancy for six years, and where little pieds terre start at $2.5 million), looks very much like "lights out West Village." On any given night at any time of the year, perhaps five or six--at most--of the building's 94 units show any signs of light, or life. "Oh, nobody buys to live there," a veteran broker told me. "They're all investments by foreigners"' And yet, boasts Mr. Steven Witkoff, the builder of 150 Charles Street, "We don't have any global buyers. We didn't get the pied terre crowd." I wonder how you say "Duh!' in Russian. [By the way, Mr. Witkoff's own Southampton neighborhood looks immune to any man-made catastrophe; the problems a rising Atlantic might bring is another story.]

4. I've gotta say, after living for close to 50 years in the West Village, that all this gushing--by the Hudson River and by the developers of "150 Charles Street," formerly The Watershed, and by The New York Times-had so stunned me that I didn't pick up on The Point of the whole project until I re-read that unbelievable Times story a few more disbelieving times. But there it was, hiding at the end of the story, just a few lines after Mr. Steven Witkoff's promise to create "40,000 square feet of landscaped green space" on the site, "...both private spaces and ones for all residents to share." As a mere neighbor, of course I was devastated by the oath of exclusion, but business is business and the landlord doesn't have to give me any landscaped green...--WAIT A MINUTE!!--The whole site is 47, 493 square feet, and 40,000 are to be GREEN?? All the roofs will be lawns? Maybe they'll plant grass on the walls, like those artists in England. Who knew? Who knows? Grassy walls, why not? The Real Deal said that the disappearance of the original warehouse, which was supposed to be, you know, sort of preserved, at least not annihilated, "mysterious." At least mysterious, not to put too fine a point on it. It certainly would be mysterious to look out my window and see this:

Or this:

Or this, sigh:

Oh, why is the future taking so long in getting here???

5. And the developers never contradicted that wonderful visionary dream of the architect; in fact, they added a little more dreaming of their own and convinced the reporter from the New York Times that the building will be "the downtown luxury alternative to 15 Central Park West." 15 CENTRAL PARK WEST???? Really?? 15 Central Park West was cited by CNBC as the most expensive new building in New York City. And "150 Charles Street" is the "perfect street space on a perfect West Village Street?" It is sad indeed that The New York Times does not comprehend the difference between Central Park West and the streets of the West Village. Between a grand avenue of amazing monumental apartment buildings, like the Dakota, the El Dorado, the Beresford, the San Remo, and the Majestic, and our small-scale, off-the-grid, historic leafy lovable neighborhood? Hey, New York Times, don't you read the tourist guides to this very city?? Remember Mr. Steinberg, the salesman, who said"'This is a real estate dream come true?" Steinberg gets the closing quote in the Barrionuevo piece: "It is amazing how many people said, 'We moved to 15 CPW because we loved everything about it, but had always dreamed about something like it in the Village.''' But wait, I thought all those high velocity dreamers were ALREADY living in the Village, that's what the builder said. Oh, I quibble. Whatever. Because for sure, everybody living in the Village has his or her own dreams, and one of those dreams has ALWAYS been to have the very most expensive apartment fortress in the whole city, maybe the whole world, in Greenwich Village itself. That's why we're here. Ask any neighbor. Perhaps your apparently less-than-diligent reporter might have checked out a YouTube made by our excellent neighbors, George Sanders and Shawn Curran, titled The Rape Of The West Village, all about the grotesque erection being planned. The video was made two years ago; subsequent events--and speciously altered plans presented to various specious agencies--suggest that a sequel is due, called perhaps The Extinction Of The West Village. The up-to-date video would follow the aspirations of the builders of the grotesque folly at "150 Charles Street," and presumably the aspirations as well of all those

who now live in what remains of this area, as we/they anticipate our ancient acres morphing into Central Park West. Central Park West--just where we always wanted to be. Or, to end up. How prescient of that most brilliant of comedy teams, Elaine May and Mike Nichols, in their sketch presenting two New York lovers, intellectuals at that, possibly Greenwich Village "types" of the 1950's, listening to piano music, and fretting about the world: She: I can never believe that Bartk died on Central Park West. He: Isn't that ugly? She: Ugly, ugly, ugly. So very, very, very apt. Cordially, Danny Fields