landmarks Presei:vation Conunission May 1, 1990; Designation List 225 LP-1587 23 WEST 16th STREEI' BUILDING, Borough of Manhattan, Built c. 1845. Architect unlmown. landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 818, I..ot 22. On June 10, 1986, the landmarks Presei:vation Conunission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a landmark of the 23 West 16th Street Building (Item No. 8); the building was one of twenty-three buildings located from 3 to 59 West 16th Street, each being heard that day as an individual item. A total of six witnesses spoke in favor of designation, including two witnesses who spoke specifically in regard to 23 West 16th Street, as well as to the related items. '!here were no speakers in opposition to designation. '!he landmarks Preservation Conunission has received seventy-seven letters in support of the designation of the houses on the north side of West 16th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. DESCRIPI'ION AND ANALYSIS Summary located on the north side of West 16th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, No. 23 West 16th Street is a distinctive Greek Revival rowhouse constructed about 1845, at a time when the Union Square area was developing as a fashionable neighborhocxi. As the city expanded northward in the 1840s, the area west of Union Square and north of 14th Street, then bordering on the city's northernmost urban limits, became a prosperous neighborhocxi of mansions and fine rowhouses. Characteristic of the Greek Revival style, this brick-fronted house, with its elegant design and proportions, is trimmed in finely detailed stone, ironwork, and wocxi, exerrplified by the original wocxi door enframement with its slender Corinthian pilasters supporting an entablature and transom above and the richly ornamented iron parlor-sto:ry balcony and stoop railing. '!he eared and battered entrance surround, executed in stone, is a distinguishing architectural feature initially derived from Egyptian sources that was popular in Greek Revival rowhouse designs during the 1840s. '!his rowhouse is one of at least six on this block planned and probably built by contractor and amateur architect Augustus T. Cowman. In the late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century, the area changed in character from residential to one of mixed use, as corrrrnercial buildings replaced most of the older rowhouses. Remarkably intact, No. 23 West 16th Street maintains its simple elegance and serves as a significant reminder of the fonner residential character of the neighborhocxi to the west of Union Square.1 1

'Ihe Development of the Union Square Neighborhood2 'Ihe site of 23 West 16th Street originally laid within the original boundaries of a fann belonging to Simon Congo, a "free black man" and property owner in seventeenth-centw:y New York. 'Ihis property was later incorporated into the holdings of esteemed landowner Hem:y Brevoort of the Bowe:ry, a New York civic leader. 'Ihe northennnost tract of the Brevoort fann was sold to 'Ihornas and Samuel Burling in 1799 and in 1825 the section of land now roughly bounded by Fifth and Sixth Avenues and West 16th and 17th Streets was purchased from them by John Cowman. '!he land remained rural into the 1830s, despite the fact that Fifth and Sixth Avenues were opened to traffic in this area a decade earlier. 'Ihe development of this and the surrounding blocks was tied to New York's inexorable march northward. 'Ihe fact that this area became a prime residential neighborhood was due to its proximity to Union Square. Union Place (later known as Union Square), located a little over one block to the east of 23 West 16th Street, appears on the New York City Connnissioners Map of 1807-11, which fonnalized the street grid of Manhattan above Houston Street. It was fonned by the unplanned convergence or "union" of the Bowe:ry Road (Fourth Avenue), and Bloomingdale Road (Broadway), and initially extended from 10th to 17th Streets, on land owned by the Manhattan Bank. In 1815,

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