Jacobs came at the invitation of the West Village Houses Tenants Association, who, among all New Yorkers, owe her and her cohorts in the West Village Committee a considerable debt of gratitude. They were instrumental both in stopping the city from designating the Far West Village as a slum and appropriating it for demolition and rebuilding and in offering a plan for the parcels of land that strung along under the old elevated High Line extension. The plan was to move away from the “tower in a park” concept of urban housing and create a series of 42 low-rise, low upkeep (elevator-less) buildings that promised the sort of homes people wanted to live in. “Human-scale” is the phrase most often used. She argued that a lively streetscape, where people knew their neighbors, promoted a healthy community life and by extension a vibrant city.

With pleasure, Jacobs recalled her early days in New York, when, to familiarize herself with her new city, she would get off the subway at random stops and explore the neighborhood upstairs. She immediately took to the Village because, unlike Midtown where the “suits” moved through the streets with a great sense of purpose, Villagers seemed to not know what they were doing. It was intriguing to the newcomer.

She went on to trace her personal history from curious teenage high school graduate to urban planner and philosopher extraordinaire. She told the rapt audience of the late-night meetings, spontaneous civil disobedience, clerical espionage; along the way, she offered insights and accumulated wisdom for application to the battles of today.

West Village Houses sold her first as well as her most recent book that evening. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, never out of print, was a hot seller. The author stayed to sign books and greet old friends, including Ray Matz, the original architect of West Village Houses. Jacobs said, “We always thought of the people who would live here when our vision for the West Village Houses was realized, and we believed they would be the guardians of our plans. And here you are.” to rousing applause.

On May 20, West Village Houses Tenants Association president Katy Bordonaro, along with Mayor Bloomberg; Comm. Shaun Donovan of the Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development and Jeff Cohen, representative of West Village Houses owners, signed an agreement paving the way for tenants of the Mitchell-Lama project to buy their homes and create limited-profit cooperatives, thus retaining critical middle-income housing stock in a strip of the Far West Village most vulnerable to over-development with luxury “towers [near} the [Hudson River] park.”

GVBA News Summer 2004 — Contents