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The New School says of its upcoming building:

“Although gardens are rare in a place as densely built as Manhattan, the designers of the University Center found room for a front lawn of sorts: On the setback between the seventh and eighth floors will sit the Green Roof, carpeted with a leafy green flower called sedum. And in true New School fashion, the Green Roof’s purpose is interdisciplinary, providing both decoration and a boost to sustainability. The sedum plantings help cool and heat the center by providing an extra layer of sustainable insulation. Further, sedum allows the roof to absorb 40 percent of the rain falling on the building, which reduces impact on the city’s water system. The Green Roof, which is just one part of an overall water conservation strategy for the University Center, will reduce the building’s potable water usage by 74 percent and sewer discharge by 89 percent.”

The Real Deal reports:

Beauty brand NYX Cosmetics signed a lease for a new store on Union Square West, a 2,800-square-foot space on the ground floor of Brause Realty’s 75,000-square-foot commercial building at 41 Union Square West, at the corner of East 17th Street. The lease was signed earlier this month. It’s where Starbucks was before it moved.

The youth-focused chain chose a location close to New York University and nestled among a concentration of cosmetics stores ringing Union Square, including Fresh, Bluemercury and Sephora, each within a block of the new location. On the south side of Union Square, Estee Lauder’s MAC inked a lease at the Feil Organization’s 853 Broadway two years ago.

Community Board #3 has voted overwhelmingly to support designation of the proposed East Village/Lower East Side and East 10th Street Historic Districts. This is a major step towards preservation of the irreplaceable and increasingly threatened historic resources and character of the East Village. However, the Landmarks Preservation Committee must still approve the move.

From The Village Sun:

 

On Monday, coinciding with phase one of the city’s reopening, Mayor de Blasio, in a bold show of support for mass transit, declared that the new 14th St. busway is now permanent.

“The 14th St. busway, this has been a success by every measure,” de Blasio said. “I said, we’re going to do it, we’re going to see if it works, we’re going to see, do people ride the bus more? Does the bus go faster? Does it have any negative impact on the surrounding streets? And the jury is back. The answer is, it is a clear success. We are making the 14th St. busway permanent.”

Launched in early October, the 14th St. busway was initially pitched as an 18-month pilot project. The stated plan was that, after the year and a half, the project would be assessed and then a decision made on whether to continue it. Now, however, after only eight months — with more than two of those months falling during the low-traffic COVID-19 lockdown — the busway has been decreed a permanent fixture on 14th St.

The first-of-its-kind program bans cars from 14th St. between Third and Ninth Aves. between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. seven days a week. Only buses and trucks are allowed as through traffic during those hours. Cars and taxis can enter the crosstown boulevard, but must then take their first right-hand turn off of it.

The mayor also announced Monday that the city is now moving forward with creating five more busways around town.

“I don’t think a busway like 14th St. was successfully achieved previously in city history,” de Blasio said. “The fact that today we’re saying 14th St. is now permanent [as a busway], five more coming in; it is the beginning of something really positive, obviously, between the busways, the Select Bus Service, all of these approaches have been working. And that opens the door to a very positive future for New York City. And this is a great time to do it because we got to give people confidence to come back to mass transit.”

Streetsblog reported that the new busways will include Fifth Ave. between 57th and 34th Sts.; E. 181st St. from Amsterdam Ave. to Broadway; Main St. between Sanford St. and Northern Boulevard, in Flushing, Queens; Jamaica Ave. from Sutphin Boulevard to 168th St., in Jamaica, Queens; and Jay St. between Fulton and Tillary Sts., in Downtown Brooklyn.

Along with the new busways, dedicated bus lanes will be added on E. 14th St. between First Ave. and Avenue C, as well as three other locations, in the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. The E. 14th St. dedicated bus lanes will be added this month, the mayor said.

Predictably, transit-advocacy groups were elated at the news that the 14th St. busway is not going anywhere.

“The 14th St. Busway has been a resounding success,” said Danny Harris, executive director of Transportation Alternatives. “We are pleased to see it made permanent, and that more busways will soon be coming online. New Yorkers deserve a bus commute without being stuck in endless car traffic. Our streets must be a tool toward the city’s recovery, and we look forward to working with the Department of Transportation to bring more bus-only corridors across the five boroughs.”

“As almost everybody knows, the busway is a historically great success,” said Danny Pearlstein, communications director for the Riders Alliance. “Riders are thrilled to see it made permanent and inspire imitations citywide.”

 

Here’s an update on what NYU plans to build on the now vacant lot on Washington Square Park South where the Catholic Church used to be.

At least it’s only six stories high.

Exciting new for the neighborhood that proves that the 14th St. shareholders live in an important building: our neighbor at number 22, namely the Duane Reade building, has been landmarked by the city for its historical significance. This action protects it in perpetuity. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation gives us this historical background:

 

“The Baumann Brothers Furniture and Carpets Store was built in 1880-81 for James McCreery (1826- 1903), a well-known textiles merchant of Scottish descent. It was designed by the architectural firm of D. & J. Jardine, whose principals, David and John Jardine, were brothers also of Scottish birth. One of the more prominent, prolific, and versatile New York firms in the late-nineteenth century, D. & J. Jardine executed designs for a wide variety of building types, including a number of notable cast-iron fronts, in contemporary styles. The wide cast-iron front facade of the Baumann Brothers store is one of the firm’s and one of the city’s most inventive, unusual, and ornamental. Built toward the end of the heyday of cast-iron fronts in New York and the flourishing creativity in that material, the Baumann Brothers store is also a signal achievement of Aesthetic Movement design. An amalgam of ornamental influences, including neo-Classical, neo-Grec, and Queen Anne styles, is embraced to achieve a decorative overall composition. Another designed, though simpler, facade on 13th Street is clad in brick and stone with a cast-iron ground story. The building’s prime location was in the midst of Manhattan’s primary retail shopping district, which included 14th Street, Union Square, and Ladies’ Mile. From 1881 to 1897, it housed Baumann Brothers, a furniture-manufacturing company established c. 1870 by Albert and Ludwig Baumann, Bohemian Jewish immigrants. By 1884, the firm occupied the entire structure and billed itself as “the largest and most complete furnishing establishment in America.” A painted sign advertising Baumann Brothers is still visible on the building’s western wall. For eight decades, the ground story contained 5-10-and-25-cent stores, beginning with the fourth Woolworth store in Manhattan (1900-28), acclaimed at its opening “the largest ten-cent store in the world.” This space was later a store for F. & W. Grand, H.L. Green, and McCrory. The upper stories were leased for over eight decades for show rooms and manufacturing by various firms related to the textile and sporting goods industries, as well as a gymnasium and classrooms for the Delehanty Institute (1930-63), which trained candidates of the Police and Fire Departments. The building currently contains a drugstore, while the upper stories are used as an annex to the Parsons School of Design.”