More is More: The NoHo Historic District Extension

In this series, ‘More is More,’ we look at historic districts extensions in our area.

In the previous posts, we covered the designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District Extension and the St. Mark’s Historic District Extension.  Today we are going to look at the NoHo Historic District Extension, designated May 13, 2008.  Following the designation of the NoHo Historic District in 1999, GVSHP was a staunch advocate for extending landmark protections to the remainder of the NoHo neighborhood, as were many long-time neighborhood residents.  In 2003, the NoHo East Historic District was designated, and the final piece was added with the designation of the NoHo Historic District Extension in 2008.

The extension includes 56 historically and architecturally significant buildings that were excluded from the two earlier NoHo historic districts. With this designation, the area’s early- to mid-nineteenth century residences and late-nineteenth century store-and-loft buildings, as well as the neighborhood’s incredibly important cobblestone streets, that had for years remained unprotected, finally received the landmark safeguards that they deserved.

The NoHo Historic District Extension includes several outstanding buildings, including a Federal-style rowhouse at 26 Bond Street and a Greek Revival style rowhouse at 52 Bond Street, remnants of a time when this area was a premier residential neighborhood.  Further, the Italianate stables at 31-33 Great Jones Street, which date to 1871, stand out not only for their design but also because they differ in size and shape from the tall store-and loft buildings that dominate the neighborhood.

NoHo is probably best-known for its loft buildings, and the extension contains several noteworthy examples, including 47 Great Jones Street, an imposing Renaissance Revival loft building, and 21 Bond Street, an 1890s loft with a façade articulated in Roman brick, brownstone, and terra cotta.  The extension’s rowhouses, tenements, stables, and lofts helped to complete the preservation of the entire NoHo neighborhood.  Like the other two NoHo districts, the physical fabric of the extension reflects the history of the neighborhood from an elegant residential area to a manufacturing district and later to a magnet for some of the late-twentieth century’s best known American artists, including Robert Mapplethorpe, Chuck Close, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, upon whose home and studio GVSHP placed a plaque in 2016.

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