Happy Holiday Market
We were going to announce the opening of the Union Square Holiday Market today, but it’s been open for over a week already. Christmas comes earlier every year. Our advice: go midday. At night it’s an agita-inducing mosh pit.
On University Place a few blocks down. And it appears to be very popular. Good desserts.
Have a browse through Idlewild Books, on West 19th St. just west of 5th Ave. on the south side of the street. This travel specialist arranges all its books, no matter what kind they are–fiction, essay, guide–by location, so that E.B. White’s “Here Is New York” is right next to “Fodor’s New York.” It’s a novel idea that makes for great browsing. This is one of the city’s most pleasant independent bookstores. Good luck to them.
The neighborhood is more fun now that crazy chef Eddie Huang’s Baohaus 2 is open on 14th between 2nd and 3rd. A bao is a little Chinese sandwich usually stuffed with some kind of pork. The inventive and very funny Huang, who has Taiwanese roots, is making many variations on the theme, plus coming up with all kinds of other funky Chinese home cooking. Check it out.
This report from Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservaation notes that 64 University Place, the non-descript building currently housing Agata and Valentina, may be scheduled to meet its destiny with the wrecking ball. In its place, a 12-story building.
Village Preservation has learned that a developer has filed plans to demolish 64-66 University Place (10th/11th Street) within our proposed South of Union Square Historic District we have been fighting to get landmarked.
No permits have yet been filed for a new building, though we understand a 12-story building is being contemplated. The zoning for the site allows a roughly 42,000 square foot building here, of residential, commercial, and community facility uses, with about 6-7,000 square feet of additional air rights purchased from neighboring 70 University Place. By comparison, neighboring 21 East 10th Street is approximately 56,000 square feet.
Village Preservation has been campaigning for landmark designation for this area, and our research and documentation submitted to the City shows that this building, in spite of its utilitarian looks, actually has an incredibly important history worthy of recognition and protection. While we have made some progress recently advancing our landmarking proposal, the City has nevertheless resisted landmarking the full proposed district, and Councilmember Carlina Rivera, who represents this area, has not endorsed the historic district landmarking proposal.