Silver Towers (University Village)
100 Bleecker Street | Greenwich Village | built 1967
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1960
The Board of Estimate lets NYU buy the Houston-to-Bleecker superblock for faculty housing
After Washington Square Village's developers dropped a planned third building on the southern superblock, NYU said in January 1960 that it wanted the land for faculty and married-student housing. Critics argued that private builders would pay more than $10.50 a square foot, but the Board of Estimate approved the sale that September. NYU had to build a third of the units as middle-income housing, with priority for people who lived or worked nearby.
- 1964
Crews pour four-foot concrete pads nonstop, then raise three towers on a three-day cycle
A ceremonial groundbreaking on August 12, 1964 launched the first tower, 505 LaGuardia Place, and NYU president James Hester called the project a successful example of community cooperation. Tishman built the towers and Farkas & Barron engineered them, starting with a four-foot-thick concrete pad under each footprint that the New York Times likened to a military campaign. The towers then rose on a three-day cycle of forms and steel, pouring and stripping, and the first was topped out in December 1964.
“The first step was the pouring of the foundations – a four-foot-thick concrete pad covering each building's footprint.”
- 1966
I. M. Pei's team casts three identical concrete towers in a pinwheel around a lawn
I. M. Pei & Associates, with James Ingo Freed as chief designer, arranged three identical 30-story towers in a pinwheel around a 100-by-100-foot lawn. The buff-colored reinforced concrete was cast in place with fiberglass molds, and the landmarks report links the result to Le Corbusier, whom Pei admired. Each floor has four or eight deeply recessed window bays beside a 22-foot windowless wall.
- 1967
NYU commissions a giant concrete Picasso for the lawn after Pei lost an earlier bid
In November 1967, while the Museum of Modern Art was showing Picasso's sculpture, NYU announced it would erect an enlargement of his Sylvette bust at University Village. Pei had wanted a Picasso for Kips Bay Plaza, but developer William Zeckendorf offered him fifty saplings or the sculpture, and Pei took the trees. At NYU he persuaded the MoMA patrons Allan and Kate Emil to pay for it.
- 1968
Carl Nesjar's crew takes five months, twice the estimate, to cast the Bust of Sylvette
From January to June 1968 Carl Nesjar's crew worked on the concrete figure, and one assistant, Eric Hesselberg, had crewed the 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition. They filled the forms with crushed Norwegian basalt and Hudson Valley traprock, injected liquid concrete, then sandblasted the surface to reveal the dark stone. Nesjar adjusted the design slightly for scale and joked that he might be the only person who had corrected a Picasso.
- 2008
At the landmark hearing, 27 speakers back University Village while NYU pitches a fourth tower
At the Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing on June 24, 2008, twenty-seven speakers spoke in favor of designation, among them Borough President Scott Stringer. NYU also testified in support while describing its proposal to add a fourth tower on the site.
Nearby
- Silver Towers110 Bleecker Street | 10 entries
- University Village (505 LaGuardia Place)505 LaGuardia Place | 8 entries
- 200 Mercer Street2 entries
- 160 Wooster Street1 entry
- 143 Greene Street1 entry
- 141 Greene Street2 entries