Washington Sq. Chapel To Close, Plot To Be Sold
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The Archdiocese of New York is planning to demolish a chapel on Washington Square Park this summer and sell off most of the large plot for another use, prompting speculation that the prime real estate would become home to a New York University dorm or luxury condominiums.
The Catholic Center at New York University, which operates independently of NYU, joins several Catholic Church properties in Greenwich Village to face demolition in the last few months.
St. Ann’s Church and Rectory on East 12th Street is being reconstructed into a 26-story NYU dormitory to be completed in 2009. St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church on 8th Street and Avenue B, across from Tompkins Square Park, will be demolished because the archdiocese said it is structurally unsound. Officials from the church have said they have not yet determined a use for that large lot. According to the Washington Square News, the Catholic Center will be rebuilt as a smaller facility in two or three years and occupy a small portion of the existing 35,000-square-foot lot.
Despite its location in the heart of NYU’s campus and the university buildings on both sides of the Catholic Center, university officials said yesterday they would not purchase the site.
“The university makes the real estate choices that work for it, and this wasn’t one of them,” a spokesman for NYU, John Beckman, said. “I think that we ought to get away from the common myth that NYU will buy any piece of property that is nearby it. It’s just not so.”
NYU has come under fire in the last few years from community advocates who see the campus expansion across east and central Greenwich Village as eating away at the neighborhood’s character. The executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, said yesterday that when a property is listed in the area, his organization expects that NYU would try to acquire it.
“It must have been a phenomenal price, because they have been buying up everything else for blocks around,” Mr. Berman said.
Two sources familiar with the site said the university’s decision not to purchase it was probably due to an exorbitant sale price. A spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, Joseph Swilling, did not return several messages yesterday.
