NYU to Receive Village Alliance’s Buchbinder Award for ‘Meticulous and Gleaming Restoration’

      On June 18, the Village Alliance will present the first Norman Buchbinder Award to New York University for “its outstanding, meticulous, and gleaming restoration” of five buildings at 6-22 East 8th Street. “These buildings with their unified design are one of the great architectural treats of the Village, and now, thanks to NYU, their soul has been restored along with their looks,” writes the Village Alliance.
    nbsp;  The award was established last year in memory of Norman Buchbinder, the founder of the Village Alliance Business Improvement District (BID), which was established in 1993. The honor is presented to either the “Merchant of the Year” or a property owner for restoring a building located both in the Business Improvement District and in the Greenwich Village Historic District.
    nbsp;  The alliance notes that the effort was especially challenging because when the architects remodeled these 1830s townhouses in 1916, “they produced such an exuberant design that even the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has had a hard time describing their efforts, hailing them as ‘unique to the Village.’ NYU’s 8th Street restoration project stands with the remodeling of Washington Square as one of the most significant historic appreciation and rescue projects in Greenwich Village in recent decades.”
    nbsp;  Contributors to the project, which took two years, included NYU’s Office of Construction Management, Office of Strategic Assessment, Planning, and Design, and Faculty Housing Office, as well as the architects Fuller and D’Angelo, and contractor DP Consulting. Consultation by Columbia University professor Andrew Dolkart enabled the team to authentically restore the landmark.