Where the 1969 boundary begins
The Landmarks Preservation Commission's 1969 designation report for the Greenwich Village Historic District starts its boundary description at Washington Square South, and West 4th Street is among the streets it goes on to name. That district is split between two of the city's official planning areas: part of it lies in the Greenwich Village area covered here, and much of it lies in the West Village area. Parts of this area also lie within the South Village Historic District, designated December 17, 2013, and the MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens Historic District, designated August 2, 1967, whose boundary follows MacDougal Street and Sullivan Street.
What the tax-lot file counts
The city's tax-lot file, PLUTO, gives the official Greenwich Village area 21,491 residential units on 854 residential lots. That planning area also contains NoHo, which shares these figures and has a page of its own because its loft rules differ. By building type, the units break down this way:
- co-op buildings: 33.4%
- condo buildings: 17.7%
- mixed-use and other buildings: 17.6%
- walk-up rentals: 15.3%
- elevator rentals: 15.1%
- one- and two-family houses: about 0.7% together
By era, 58.3% of those units are in buildings put up before 1940, 36.0% in buildings from 1940 through 1979, and 5.7% in buildings from 1980 on. Read together, the figures describe a place where a purchase is usually a co-op or condo apartment in a pre-war or mid-century building, and where townhouses are a sliver of the stock.
Buying shares, not walls
The New York Attorney General's guide to cooperatives lays out the structure. A co-op purchaser buys shares in a corporation; the shares are allocated to a specific apartment and entitle the owner to a long-term proprietary lease, and maintenance is based on the shares. In a typical co-op, the corporation holds the roof, the facade, the boiler and the halls, and the board decides how they are kept up.
That division sets the limits of a pre-purchase walkthrough. An inspection of a co-op apartment looks at what serves the unit:
- Electrical: the apartment's panel or fuse box, visible wiring, outlets, and protection near sinks. Pre-war buildings typically carry several generations of wiring side by side.
- Plumbing: fixtures, shut-off valves, supply lines and how quickly drains clear. Buildings of this age typically connect apartments to cast-iron and galvanized risers.
- Heat and cooling: radiators or convectors, their valves, and any window or through-wall air conditioners serving the apartment.
- Windows and ventilation: sash operation, sills, and bathroom and kitchen exhaust.
- Water from elsewhere: stains or soft plaster on ceilings below other apartments and on exterior walls.
It does not reach the boiler room, the roof, the elevator machinery, the board's minutes, the reserve fund or the corporation's finances. Those belong to your attorney's review and to the package the board provides.
If you plan to renovate, co-ops typically require an alteration agreement that the board approves before work starts, which can include a review by the board's architect. In a historic district, any part of that plan that touches the exterior also needs the commission, so it is worth sketching the scope before you sign rather than after.
Records worth pulling before contract
For a pre-war co-op inside a historic district, two public sources carry the most weight.
- The offering plan. The Attorney General's Offering Plan Database can be searched by property name, address, file number, sponsor or principal. It shows the filing type, the number and type of units, the sponsor and principals, the relevant dates and a list of amendments. Plan documents are posted for some plan IDs on a documents tab, and where nothing is posted, the tab does not appear. Financial statements, minutes and house rules typically come through the seller's side during due diligence.
- Landmark permits. Owners must get a commission permit, under the Landmarks Law, before changing a designated property's exterior and, in some cases, its interior. The LPC applications page explains filing through Portico and links to a public Permit Application Search showing what a building has already applied for. Whether a change you have in mind, such as new windows or a wall sleeve for an air conditioner, counts as exterior work is a question for the commission and the board before you rely on it.
Flood maps and the subway
FEMA's coastal and riverine zones do not show stormwater or basement flooding, and preliminary maps can differ from the effective ones that set insurance requirements today. Look up the building's own address on both at the FEMA Map Service Center before you sign.
Several stops fall inside the official area according to the MTA's station dataset: 6 Av on the L train and 8 St-NYU on the R/W trains, plus, along Lafayette Street, Bleecker St on the 6 train, Broadway-Lafayette St on the B/D/F/M trains, and Astor Pl. The L platform at 14 St-Union Sq also falls inside it, while the complex's other platforms sit in the neighboring Midtown South-Flatiron-Union Square area.
A sensible order here: confirm the plan and its amendments, read the building's LPC permit history, then schedule the apartment walkthrough once the board package is in hand, in English or Bangla.