Some residents of one of a trio of I.M. Pei-designed high-rise buildings in Greenwich Village are calling for their block to be designated a historical landmark to prevent a new development planned by New York University.

NYU has said in town hall meetings it has plans to build a science center or faculty housing on a site now occupied by a supermarket on the corner of La Guardia Place and Bleecker Street. The site is part of Silver Towers, a Robert Moses-designated “superblock” that runs between La Guardia and Mercer Street, and between Bleecker and Houston streets. The complex, which was created in the early 1960s, includes three 30-story buildings designed by Mr. Pei; two house NYU faculty and one is an affordable cooperative for neighborhood residents.

The complex also has a gymnasium and an Associated supermarket known as the Morton Williams supermarket, both owned by NYU. The gym and the supermarket were not designed by Pei but are part of the superblock and must be included in a landmark designation, proponents said.

“We find it hard to believe there’s a serious architectural argument to be made that the Morton Williams supermarket should be land marked; such a conclusion would be obvious to any passer-by,” NYU’s director of government and community relations, Michael Haberman, said in an e-mail to The New York Sun.

The sites of the supermarket and the gym were intended to be either open space or low-lying buildings, according to the Pei design, and to cover them with large-scale buildings would ruin the intention of the design and would block out light for residents, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, said.

He said, however, that the area occupied by the supermarket is zoned for a floor-to-area ratio of 6.5, allowing for a building at least 20 stories high.

A handful of residents of the co-op at 505 La Guardia, including City Council Member Alan Gerson, who grew up at the building and still lives there, gathered outside the towers yesterday to protest the NYU development.

“I want stability that comes with being land marked. I want to know I can wake up every day and this will always look the same,” a resident of the co-op since 1968, Joan Bastone, said.

“I’ve seen NYU gobble up the Village piece by piece, and I’ve seen how the neighborhood changed for the worse,” the president of the co-op board, Henry Schiavone, said.

“I’m here not only as a councilman, but as a neighbor,” Mr. Gerson told his neighbors at the rally. “This is an example of New York land use at its best, an example of how high-rises in New York can work right.”

The three towers are the tallest buildings in Greenwich Village, yet the design is such that “you don’t feel overwhelmed or lose the human scale,” Mr. Gerson said. The Silver Towers complex also boasts one of only two outdoor sculptures in the Western Hemisphere by Pablo Picasso.

“If any place deserves land marking, it is this place, because where else can you find both I.M. Pei and Pablo Picasso together?” Mr. Gerson said.

Co-op residents have met with the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, and Mr. Gerson said he had “preliminary” talks with its chairman, Robert Tierney.

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation has been supporting the effort to get the Silver Towers complex designated a landmark, writing letters to the landmarks commission and to the president of NYU, John Sexton.

In the email yesterday, NYU’s Mr. Haberman said: “It is disappointing that an organization that is usually as thoughtful and discerning as the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation is supporting the land marking of the Morton Williams supermarket.”