The Fight to Save a Rowhouse With Ties to Theatrical History

Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out about a townhouse in Greenwich Village that could win landmark designation — if it’s not too late. We’ll also take a second look at a 1-cent postage stamp that is worth considerably more than that.

Preservations want the city to designate the rowhouse that once housed the 13th Street Repertory Theater as a landmark.Credit…James Barron/The New York Times

The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission voted on Tuesday to “calendar” a Greek Revival rowhouse on West 13th Street, meaning that it will put a public hearing about the 178-year-old building on its calendar. That is the first step toward deciding whether to designate it a landmark.

But preservationists who have been pushing for landmark status since 2020 worry that the calendaring has come a little late. The facade was stripped off a few weeks ago, something that “would not have happened had the commission acted sooner,” said Andrew Berman, executive director of Village Preservation, a nonprofit preservation advocacy group.

Still, Berman said that he was “thrilled” that it was now on a path that could lead to landmarking. (A spokeswoman for the commission said that only “nonhistoric” elements like an awning, fire escapes and ironwork around the door had been removed. “The historic facade remains in place,” she said.)

Village Preservation maintains that the building has connections to Black history and the civil rights movement, women’s suffrage and theatrical history. And the group would not take no for an answer.