City Flatly Rejects Pleas to Save Adorable Pastel Townhouses

EAST VILLAGE, NY — The city on Thursday rejected the plea of community members to save a row of historic East Village houses on East 7th Street, including the pale periwinkle staple, 264 E. 7th St., where the beloved children's book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" was illustrated.

The line of townhouses on East 7th Street are some of the only remaining historic buildings in the neighborhood — their nearby counterparts have been dropping like flies to make way for luxury condos and hotels. These particular townhouses are painted in pastel colors, breathing some color into the street.

The famous illustrator Felicia Bond lived in 264 E. 7th St. when she drew the famous illustrations for "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," according to EV Grieve.

This is the second time in a month that the mayor's Landmarks Preservation Commission has rejected the historic preservation of buildings that they considered eligible for historic preservation just eight years ago, said Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP).

In 2008, the city said the row of houses, from 258 to 266 E. 7th St., "appear to be an LPC-eligible historic district."

"Anybody would look at these buildings and say they were the very definition of historic," Berman told Patch.

The city's official reasoning was that there was no precedent for them to designate historic districts when the buildings cover just one side of the street. Berman pointed to at least eight examples of past historic designations by the Landmarks Preservation Commission that covered just one side of the street, including a row of buildings on East 10th Street that's just a few blocks away.

The LPC, in its letter to the GVSHP rejecting historic designation of the East 7th buildings, pointed to the extensive alterations made to the exterior of the buildings since they were built as a reason they weren't historic. But Berman pointed out the buildings hadn't been altered at all since 2008, when the LPC itself had designated them eligible to be considered historic.

Berman said it's all part of the mayor's administration "devaluing preservation and going back on prior commitments" and is "indicative of a lack of interest" on the LPC's part to save historic East Village buildings.

Hundreds of community members across lower Manhattan have accused the mayor of granting his developer friends favors by having the LPC reject historic designation of buildings so they can be demolished for new luxury developments.

Photo credit: Felicia Bond/Wikimedia Commons/CC by 3.0. Header image: Google Maps