The battle between an artist and his neighbors in the far West Village heated up yesterday, as villagers rallied against the construction of nine stories of apartments atop Julian Schnabel’s three-story studio and home. Protesters accused the artist’s construction crews of working for hours before and after they are legally allowed to – and sometimes all night – in order to build enough of the foundation of the new construction to qualify for an exemption from the recent rezoning that would ban new high-rise developments from the neighborhood.

“Every day for three and a half weeks they’ve been working an extra two hours in the morning and at night, with jackhammers, bulldozers, concrete trucks, big generators,” Daniel Scolnick, whose home abuts Mr. Schnabel’s to the south, said. “Some days they worked 24 hours. They just closed the garage doors and kept on jackhammering. They kept people up all night.” The builders’ permit allows them to work from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays. Mr. Scolnick said he videotaped the construction, and eight neighbors confirmed his complaints in sworn affidavits.

Mr. Schnabel won approval for his development – which would add 110 feet to his 57-foot-tall building – last January. The addition would house six apartments, a swimming pool, and a doctor’s office.

On October 11, however, the City Council rezoned the Far West Side to cap new buildings at 80 feet. Three days later, the Department of Buildings found the addition’s foundation footings to be complete, which would allow construction to continue because of a grandfather clause in the rezoning law.

The department agreed to reconsider its decision after City Council Member Christine Quinn, State Senator Tom Duane, Assembly Member Deborah Glick, and the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the activist group behind the rezoning, brought Mr. Schnabel’s work to its attention.

“We fought long and hard to protect the scale and character of this neighborhood,” the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, said. “If a celebrity can flout the law, there’s no point in making that law.”

He added that the Building Department said it would decide this month whether Mr. Schnabel’s addition will be allowed. Representatives of the department were unavailable for comment over the weekend.

Mr. Schnabel did not appear to be home during the protest and did not answer repeated calls to his house, which is the site of the construction.