Jeremiah over at Vanishing New York recently noticed some activity at the long dormant corner of East 10th Street and Fourth Avenue, the East Village outskirts where the rumor has been a new hotel. We wanted some hard facts so we dove into the depths of city records to find out what the heck is going on. According to a disapproved plan for the corner lot at 71-73 Fourth Avenue, the emptied and plywooded buildings were eyed for a new 13-story hotel. To make that happen the wedge-shaped lot would join up with two oldsters to the east, at 82 and 84 East 10th. But that's not all!
There's also a proposal to grab some additional development rights from the the four-story 1910 brick townhouse at 86 East 10th Street, and another four-floor pile around the corner at 63 Fourth Avenue. This convoluted combination would create a big C-shaped development lot facing onto Fourth Avenue, completely surrounding the eight-story building at 65-69 Fourth Avenue.
Deeper digging shows that the scheme from the team at Issac & Stern Architects (although not revealed on their website) is for a 13-story mixed-use building, with a "health treatment center" on the first floor, 70 hotel rooms spread across floors 2-10 and nine apartments on the top three floors. So far none of this has been approved and no details of any development deals or air rights transfers between the various properties have been recorded at the Department of Finance, so what change may come remains a mystery.
In the 1950s this stretch of East 10th Street was the hub of the downtown art and jazz scene and home to Willem de Kooning. Today, mid-block East 10th looks pretty much the way it did 50 years ago when it was captured in photos for LIFE magazine. The avant-garde has moved on, but the buildings remain, for now.
· Is 10th Street falling again? [Vanishing New York]
· East Village Mystery Hotel Remains Mysterious [Curbed]
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