Landmarks Preservation Commission June 28, 2011, Designation List 444 LP-2419 154 WEST 14th STREET BUILDING, 154-162 West 14th Street (aka 51-59 Seventh Avenue), Manhattan. Built 1912-13; Herman Lee Meader, architect; New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co., terra cotta. Landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 609, Lot 7. On June 22, 2010, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a Landmark of the 154 West 14th Street Building and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site (Item No. 5). The hearing had been duly advertised in accordance with the provisions of law. Three people spoke in favor of designation, including representatives of New York Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, and the Historic Districts Council. Summary The 154 West 14th Street Building (1912-13), a 12-story speculative loft structure constructed for lawyer-banker and real estate developer Leslie R. Palmer, was the first completed New York City design by architect Herman Lee Meader, with whom Palmer collaborated on five projects. The building’s location at the prominent intersection of 14th Street and Seventh Avenue anticipated the southward extension of Seventh Avenue and its new subway line, and benefitted from its proximity and direct access to the Holland Tunnel and west side freight terminals. Arranged in a tripartite base-shaft-capital composition with large window areas, it is a striking and unusual example of a large loft building partly clad in terra cotta – on the three-story base, on the spandrels between the white-brick piers of the midsection, and on the upper portion. It is also a fairly early example of the use of boldly polychromatic glazed terra cotta (in hues of white, beige, mustard, cobalt blue, celadon, and green) in New York City. The terra cotta was manufactured by the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co., the city’s only major producer of architectural terra cotta, of which Palmer was a long-time director, and the building is a virtual advertisement for the material’s exterior use and, specifically, for the products of the firm. Meader’s sumptuous and eclectic ornamental scheme for the 154 West 14th Street Building incorporated Secessionist, Art Nouveau, Arts & Crafts, and Mission Revival style motifs. Although neither prolific nor well known, Meader produced other notable designs, such as the Cliff Dwelling Apartments (1914-17) at Riverside Drive and 96th Street, all of which employed interesting terra-cotta ornament. The top story of the 154 West 14th Street Building was altered c. 1950s-60s, though the Seventh Avenue facade is mostly intact.

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS Early 20th-Century Development of Seventh Avenue in Greenwich Village1 The decades of the 1910s through the 1930s were marked by profound changes in the physical fabric of the Greenwich Village neighborhood caused by the construction of new subway lines and avenues. Beginning in 1913, with the condemnation of properties along the proposed new route, Seventh Avenue was extended southward from 11th Street to Carmine Street – at an angle to the existing Village street grid, causing a swath of demolition that resulted in irregular lots and oddly altered buildings – and farther south, Varick Street and West Broadway were widened on their eastern sides. The purpose of this extension was to relieve the ever-increasing vehicular congestion in the area as well as to create a right of way for the IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit Co.) subway line. Beginning in 1925, Sixth Avenue was also extended south, from its terminus at Carmine Street, and similarly created a right of way for the newly approved municipally-operated IND (Independent Rapid Transit Railroad) subway line. Both 100-foot-wide avenues were primary vehicular links to Canal Street, the principal feeder route to the Holland Tunnel (built 1919-27). Construction of the long-planned Seventh and Six

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