Provocative Publisher's Union Sq Roots Aid Historic District Push

GREENWICH VILLAGE, NY — A Greenwich Village preservation group is highlighting a provocative 20th-century publisher's ties to several buildings south of Union Square in its push to make the area a historic district.

Six buildings there have historical connections Grove Press, a publishing house that "produced some incredibly important pieces of 20th century literature while working aggressively and effectively to transform American culture in relation to issues of censorship, sexuality, race, and class, among others," the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation's head Andrew Berman wrote last week to Sarah Carroll, the chair of the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The company published Malcolm X's autobiography and the Evergreen Review, a literary magazine that once bore Latin American Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara on its cover and published his diary excerpts — a move that led to Grove's offices at 80 University Place being bombed.

Five of the buildings housed Grove Press, the Evergreen Review and the Evergreen Theater, which screened "avant-garde and 'obscene' films which similarly challenged censorship rules and cultural norms," Berman wrote.

Grove Press owner Barney Rosset lived and worked in the sixth building at 61 Fourth Ave. until he died at 89 in 2012. Though he had left Grove Press in 1986, about five years after he moved into the Fourth Avenue apartment, he relaunched Evergreen Press online in 1998 and worked for years on a 12- by 22-foot mural in his living room at the building.

"Fortunately all of these (buildings) survive, some in perfectly intact condition, others modestly changed but still bearing clear connections to their period of significance," Berman wrote in his plea for a historic district that would cover much of the area between Fifth and Third avenues bound by East Eighth and East 14th streets.

The preservation group wrote the Oct. 31 letter as a part of its push for the new historic district after a controversial 21-story "Tech Hub" was approved to make way for a skills training center and replace the former one-story P.C. Richards & Son store on East 14th Street near Irving Place.

Under negotiations with East Village City Council Member Carlina Rivera, seven buildings were landmarked earlier this year, including the Strand Bookstore building on Broadway.

The landmarks commission has received the letter and the information "will be added to our research files as we continue to look at the area in the context of citywide efforts to recognize and protect significant buildings and districts in all five boroughs," commission spokesperson Zodet Negrón said.

"The agency did an in-depth study and analysis of this area in 2018, which resulted in the designation of seven of the most significant and intact historic buildings in June of this year," Negrón said, referencing the seven buildings recently landmarked in the area.

See the buildings with roots connected to Grove Press and Rosset within the group's proposed historic district below, with one at 841 Broadway already individually landmarked:

Read the Greenwich Village group's full letter to the commission below:

Grove Press, Barney Rosset History In Letter To LPC On Area South Of Union Square by Sydney Pereira on Scribd

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