What’s happening in/with/to Astor Place?
The site on 2-6-12, this image and others via EVGrieve.
The double-Starbucks vortex is long gone. The old Cooper Union building has now been totally demolished. A wide open space remains, vibrating with possibility. To many old-timers in the neighborhood, it’s less the possibility for cool new stuff and revitalization of aging office stock and more like the threat of the further destruction of a mythologized and romanticised East Village Bohemia. New buildings like this symbolize either proud human progress or the suburbanization and murder of the soul of the City, depending what side you’re on.
Live anywhere long enough and you get pretty attached and maybe you mourn even when things change for the better. Maybe in part because I have only lived here for ten years, I don’t view the City or the neighborhood as a museum or monument to be preserved and protected. I view it as a wonderful organism that is continually growing and changing as the needs and desires of the people in it change. Cities are supposed to change to reflect current realities. I tend to be accepting of those realities and cautiously optimistic, usually, about the gentrification of the East Village, so I’ve been watching the changes with interest.
Just this week, the new marketing website for the building went up at 51astorplace.com and I went on a spree of historical interweb-digging. Here’s some history of the site and the decade-long wrangling that had led up to the current plan: a shiny, new $200M Fumihiko Maki-designed office tower in cool black granite and clear glass. Buried in the building website is the tidbit that a new “urban plaza” will contain a sculpture by Calder and the lobby will contain “a major sculpture by a renowned artist.”
6-19-2001, Village Voice: Dis-Astor Place?
11-4-2001, NYT: NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: COOPER SQUARE; East Villagers Pull Out Their Magenta Hair Over Cooper Union’s Expansion Plans
7-28-2002, NYT: NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: EAST VILLAGE; Planners Wary of College’s Expansion, But Cooper Union Calls It Essential
2-28-2011, Curbed: Starbucks-Crushing Astor Place Office Building Will Open in 2013
6-8-2011, EV Grieve: 51 Astor Place demolition begins July 1; 17 months to build new black-glass tower
7-6-2011, TRD: Minksoff: 51 Astor Place will be “most advanced building built in NYC” since BofA’s 42nd Street HQ
9-14-2011, RE Weekly: Minskoff proceeds with 51 Astor on spec
11-3-2011, NY Observer: Construction Loan Locked Down at Minskoff’s 51 Astor
2-1-2012, TRD: Astor Master
2-15-2012, NY Observer: Minsikoff’s 51 Astor May Be New York’s Strangest New Building







