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September 2, 2026

On September 1, 2026 the Landmarks Preservation Commission heard LPC-27-01049, a Certificate of Appropriateness for 63 and 65 Charles Street in the Greenwich Village Historic District, Manhattan, Block 621. The application is to combine the two houses, demolish the party wall, build rooftop and rear yard additions, and excavate at the cellar and rear yard. Three commissioners asked that some of the party wall be kept. Deputy Counsel answered that the Commission has approved removal and reconstruction of party walls many times before. The motion that passed asks the applicant to work with staff on separation at the rear yard addition. It carries no condition on the party wall. The vote was nine in favor, none opposed.

On September 1, 2026 the Landmarks Preservation Commission heard LPC-27-01049, a Certificate of Appropriateness application for 63 and 65 Charles Street in the Greenwich Village Historic District, Manhattan, Block 621. The application is to combine the two houses, demolish the party wall, build rooftop and rear yard additions, and excavate at the cellar and rear yard. The Commission closed the hearing at 29:17 on the recording and discussed the item for twenty two minutes. Three commissioners asked that some of the party wall be kept. Deputy Counsel answered that the Commission has approved removal and reconstruction of party walls many times before. The motion that passed asks the applicant to work with staff on the rear yard addition. It asks nothing about the party wall. The vote was nine in favor, none opposed.

I attended the hearing at 253 Broadway on September 1 and walked Charles Street the same afternoon. The quotations below are drawn from the Commission's recording of the session rather than from my notes. The application history is from the city permit record for the north side of the block.

The item was read in as public hearing item number one by the director of preservation. The applicant's team introduced itself at 1:51 on the recording. A preservation consultant presented for the project, and the architects were introduced as Steven Harris Architects, with Steven Harris and Abir Ahmad present. Those are the names as given from the floor, not the architect of record on the filing. The presentation ran roughly nineteen minutes, covering the areaway and stoop, the rooftop addition, the rear yard addition, the excavation at the cellar and rear yard, plus the party wall removal at the parlor level. The rooftop addition is set back 15 feet from the front facade, which the consultant described as required by the width of Charles Street at 14:58 on the recording. On the section cut through No. 65 the excavation goes down about 12 feet below the existing cellar grade at 16:33 on the recording. The consultant told the Commission that a new wall would be built on the line of the existing vestibule wall at 65, that every other floor would keep a wall in the location of the party wall, and that the perception from the street would be of contained space within the parlor floor at 17:37 on the recording.

No commissioner asked a question before testimony. The representative for the Victorian Society New York testified, stating no objection to the street facing facades and objecting to the rooftop addition and the rear elevation. The representative asked the Commission to require a reduction in the visibility of the rooftop addition and said the rear facade should carry a greater visual cue that these were built as two separate buildings at 23:14 on the recording. The representative described the deepest overhang, on the west side of the glass box, as appearing to extend 5 feet 3 inches beyond the facade at 23:35 on the recording, and gave the ceiling height of the addition as approximately 10 feet at 23:41 on the recording. Manhattan Community Board 2 recommended approval. Village Preservation submitted written testimony that was shared with the commissioners and not read into the record.

Then the questions. Commissioner Michael Goldblum asked whether the structure of the building was being gutted completely and was told that everything was being replaced at 27:37 on the recording. Commissioner Stephen Chu asked about the zinc fascia at the rear roofline and accepted the answer that it sits behind the parapet. The hearing closed. Chair Lisa Kersavage framed the discussion around the usual test for rowhouse combinations, that the interventions still allow the combined building to read as two buildings, and noted that staff cannot approve this application because of the cumulative impact of the additions at 29:25 on the recording.

Commissioner Chu opened the discussion on the exterior questions and asked the applicant to consider a recessed brick reveal between the two halves of the rear addition, adding "I'm not forcing this issue" at 31:42 on the recording. Commissioner Everardo Jefferson accepted the rear facade as drawn. The interior entered the record with Commissioner Goldblum, who raised no concern about the front facade or the rooftop addition and then turned to the inside of the houses.

"What is a concern for me is the evisceration of the interior of the two buildings," Goldblum said at 36:03 on the recording. Goldblum went on: "we've been told by council in earlier cases that the interior does count to a certain extent to the extent that it constitutes the essence of the building" at 36:31 on the recording. The earlier cases were not named at the hearing. Goldblum asked to be assured "that there's no way to retain more of the structure of the party wall" at 36:44 on the recording. The concern was about a view. Without the party wall, Goldblum said, open space would be visible from the rear of the combined house, through the windows. The new demising wall at the parlor level falls on the wrong side of the original division, and Goldblum urged the applicant to work with staff to keep more of the party wall structure on the upper floors at 37:18 on the recording.

Commissioner Mark Ginsberg, attending remotely, was more specific. Agreeing with Goldblum, Ginsberg said "at least a few feet of the existing party wall should be kept at the interior between the two buildings" at 42:28 on the recording, and found the application appropriate otherwise. Commissioner Wellington Chen agreed with Ginsberg, said the point was that the Commission is asked most of the time to look at the exterior, and addressed the question to the agency's lawyer at 44:15 on the recording.

Deputy Counsel John Weiss answered, invited to speak by a voice immediately before. "I just want to note that the commission has in the past many occasions approved removal of party walls and then reconstruction," Weiss said at 44:35 on the recording, and went on: "so it's not like this is anything that really varies from prior approvals" at 44:47 on the recording.

Chen's reply narrowed that ask to a preference. If the applicant chooses to preserve some of the wall, "I think that would be nice is my point" at 44:52 on the recording.

Kersavage then did two things in sequence. First, at 45:40, Kersavage proposed adding two items to a motion to approve, one on the delineation of the rear yard addition and one on "the planning of the party wall" at 45:45 on the recording. Then Kersavage reasoned through the party wall item and put it down. "Is it feasible to keep more of the party wall? I'm sure it is. That's not what's been proposed," Kersavage said, before restating the operative test: the Commission has many times found it appropriate to replace a party wall with new structure "because our primary interest has always been is this something that's conspicuous, has an impact as viewed from the street and that would really only occur through window openings which in this case they're on the small size" at 46:05 on the recording. The comparison Kersavage reached for was storefronts, where a wall stays visible through plate glass. For rowhouses, Kersavage said, retention has generally not been asked for. The closing position was that a wall in the plane of the original party wall survives on every floor except the parlor floor at the front half of the building, that staff could look at the parlor floor further, and that approving the work "more or less as a full reconstruction of that party wall" would not be inconsistent at 46:56 on the recording.

The motion Kersavage read runs to roughly four minutes of findings. On the interior it says that the excavation of the cellars and the demolition of the interior party walls and all the floor plates, which the finding describes as mostly rebuilt in approximately the locations they occupy now, will be done in compliance with Department of Buildings regulations under the supervision of a licensed professional engineer, to protect the building facades and adjacent buildings at 50:37 on the recording. The party wall is disposed of as a structural safety matter governed by another agency.

The single request to the applicant in the motion is exterior. The Commission asks the applicant to work with staff on creating a minimal and simple sense of separation between the two town houses at the rear yard addition at 51:16 on the recording. The party wall item Kersavage floated six minutes earlier is not in the motion. Nothing in the motion is a condition on the party wall, and Kersavage's closing instruction after the vote was to continue to work with staff.

The hearing record and the permit record agree on one checkable point. The motion notes that the stoop, rear yard addition and stair bulkhead at No. 63 were built under LPC approvals dated 1999 to 2001. In the LPC permit dataset, No. 63 at Block 621 Lot 67 carries filings beginning with LPC-99-4972 received 1999-03-10 and running through LPC-01-7805, a Certificate of No Effect for a rooftop addition issued 2001-11-19.

That permit record also shows how unevenly this row has been worked. Across the eleven houses from 55 to 75 Charles Street on the north side of Block 621 there are 80 applications on file from 1986 to 2026, and they are not evenly spread. Nos. 63, 67 and 61 hold the longest records. No. 71 and No. 73 have one application each in forty years. No. 59, the one house on the row the 1969 designation report documents to an architect and singles out as the outstanding example on the block with its features unchanged, has six applications and no addition of any kind. The dataset starts in 1986, seventeen years after designation. LPC-27-01049 was not in it as of the 2026-09-07 refresh.

I photographed the row from the south sidewalk that afternoon, and the frame carries a construction hoarding at one end. The camera bearing recorded in the file is 3 degrees magnetic, close to due north once the local declination is applied, which puts east at the right of the frame. The house at that end of the group is No. 61. The applicant told the Commission at 5:04 on the recording that No. 61 is under construction with a scope comparable to the one proposed at 63 and 65, and No. 61 carries a Certificate of Appropriateness, LPC-25-01878, received 2024-08-20 and issued 2024-11-14.

The position recorded with that photograph does not establish the house on its own. The horizontal error stored in the file is 14 metres, wider than two house fronts on this row. What identifies No. 61 is the bearing together with the hearing record and the permit record.

The architect is named flatly in the hearing and hedged in the designation report, and the difference is worth carrying. The Commission's own item read-in and the September 1 calendar both describe the two houses as designed by Gage Inslee. The Greenwich Village Historic District Designation Report of April 29, 1969 documents Inslee for No. 59 only, calls Nos. 57 and 61 undoubtedly Inslee's, and says Inslee's plans may also have been used for the rest of the row west to No. 69, which is where 63 and 65 sit, on the evidence of a shared cornice and similar design. The same report names Bartlett Smith, a builder, as the builder of Nos. 63 to 67 and the party first assessed for them in 1867. https://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/0489.pdf

For eleven minutes of the September 1 recording the Commission was arguing about an interior, and it had a legal handhold to do it with. Goldblum did not invent the standard. It was cited at the hearing as counsel's own position from earlier cases, that the interior counts to the extent it constitutes the essence of the building. Two commissioners moved toward that position. The question went to the agency's lawyer.

What came back was not an answer about the standard. It was an answer about practice, that the Commission has approved this many times before. Practice is the strongest argument available to an agency that has to decide the next case the way it decided the last one, and it is the weakest possible answer to a question about what the rule is. Nobody in the room asked which earlier cases counsel had been talking about, and the captions record no attempt to reconcile the two positions.

Kersavage's framing is where the interior claim actually died, and it died on a test that an 1866 rowhouse party wall cannot pass. If the operative question is whether the wall is conspicuous as viewed from the street, and if Kersavage is right that the conspicuousness of an interior wall arises through window openings, then a wall behind a punched masonry front is out of reach before the argument starts. Kersavage said as much, reaching for storefronts and plate glass as the case where the test bites. That is a coherent doctrine for a district designated on its streetscape. It also means that the phrase Goldblum quoted, the interior counting to the extent that it constitutes the essence of the building, has no operative content in a rowhouse, because the essence of a rowhouse is never visible from the sidewalk.

The objection was itself a visibility argument. Goldblum's concern was not that 1866 fabric has a claim of its own. It was that open space would be visible from the rear of the combined house, through the windows, once the party wall came out at 36:44 on the recording. Ginsberg asked for a few feet of wall and rested on agreement. Chen asked whether the Commission is permitted to look at interiors at all. The strongest interior claim anyone made at this hearing was therefore still a claim about what can be seen, and the Commission answered it on those terms. No commissioner argued that the interior of these two houses matters on its own account.

One question the discussion never reached is what the combination should be required to be. The discussion ran twenty two minutes and turned on whether the combined house would still read as two houses, at the front and at the rear. None of it turned on what quality of work the joining of two 1866 houses ought to demand. Goldblum praised the applicant's talent at 35:37 on the recording, and that is the shape of the problem rather than a courtesy. An agency that can recognise talent has no instrument to require it. The standards it applies ask whether the result reads correctly from the street, not whether the work is good or who does it. That is an observation about the instrument the Commission has, not a proposal for a different one.

The record supports reading the outcome as a limit on the Commission rather than a failure of nerve. The rowhouse combination test Kersavage set out at the start of the discussion, that the combined building still read as two buildings, is a test about reading rather than about retention. Applied consistently, it reaches the result it reached here. The party wall at 63 and 65 Charles Street was measured against a standard it was never going to fail and never going to satisfy, because the standard does not ask about it.

Can a shared structural party wall be completely demolished in an NYC historic district?

Yes. The Landmarks Preservation Commission routinely approves the complete removal and reconstruction of interior party walls to facilitate rowhouse consolidations, provided the front areaways and rear extensions maintain the visual division and rhythmic scale of two separate townhouses.

LPC hearing on 63-65 Charles St. Photograph by Daniel Flugger, September 1, 2026.

What are the primary structural engineering requirements for a 12-foot cellar excavation in NYC?

A 12-foot cellar excavation requires a precise structural sequence including benched excavation, underpinning of existing adjacent foundations, and structural steel piling. Due to risks to neighboring historic fabric, these projects proceed under the LPC Enhanced Engineering Review and strict Department of Buildings oversight.

Next-door neighbor 61 Charles St actively undergoing deep structural work, enclosed in green safety mesh and orange fencing. September 1, 2026.

What are the official EPA recycling statistics for residential furniture waste?

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, furniture waste is the least-recycled household category in the country. Over 12.1 million tons are generated annually, resulting in an 80.1 percent landfill rate and a recycling recovery rate of just 0.4 percent.

Official Municipal Record: Docket LPC 27-01049

Property Address: 63-65 Charles Street, Greenwich Village Historic District, Manhattan. LPC Docket Number: LPC 27-01049, approved unanimously 9-0 with modifications. Original Construction: Built 1866, twin French Second Empire rowhouses by Gage Ensley. Lead Design Architects: Steven Harris Architects (Steven Harris, Abir Ahmad). Preservation Consultants: Higgins Quasebarth and Partners (Erin Roelly Higgins). Structural Interventions: Complete demolition of interior party wall, 12-foot basement excavation. Restoration Scope: Full facade reconstruction, stoop replication, and areaway level alignment. Binding Modification: Applicant must work with LPC staff to verticalize and delineate the rear addition.

Questions and answers

Was the party wall demolition approved? Yes. The motion passed nine in favor and none opposed. It treats the demolition of the interior party walls and floor plates as work to be carried out in compliance with Department of Buildings regulations under a licensed professional engineer. Did the Commission require any of the party wall to be kept? No. Three commissioners asked for retention during the discussion. The motion as read carries no condition on the party wall. Kersavage's closing remark that the applicant should continue to work with staff sits outside the motion and binds nothing. What did the motion ask for? One thing, and it concerns the rear facade. The Commission asks the applicant to work with staff on a minimal, simple sense of separation between the two town houses at the rear yard addition. Who designed the houses? The Commission's calendar and its item read-in say Gage Inslee. The 1969 designation report documents Inslee for No. 59 only and treats the attribution west of No. 61 as inference from the shared cornice and similar design. It names Bartlett Smith as the builder of Nos. 63 to 67. Were the facades contested? Not by the commissioners. The Victorian Society New York stated no objection to the street facing facades and objected to the rooftop addition and the rear elevation. Every commissioner who spoke found the front facade restoration appropriate.

Every quotation in this piece, with its place in the recording

Commissioner Stephen Chu at 31:42: "I'm not forcing this issue." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk&t=1902s. Commissioner Michael Goldblum at 36:03: "What is a concern for me is the evisceration of the interior of the two buildings." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk&t=2163s. Commissioner Michael Goldblum at 36:31: "We've been told by council in earlier cases that the interior does count to a certain extent to the extent that it constitutes the essence of the building." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk&t=2191s. Commissioner Michael Goldblum at 36:44: "That there's no way to retain more of the structure of the party wall." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk&t=2204s. Commissioner Mark Ginsberg at 42:28: "At least a few feet of the existing party wall should be kept at the interior between the two buildings." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk&t=2548s. Deputy Counsel John Weiss at 44:35: "I just want to note that the commission has in the past many occasions approved removal of party walls and then reconstruction." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk&t=2675s. Deputy Counsel John Weiss at 44:47: "So it's not like this is anything that really varies from prior approvals." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk&t=2687s. Commissioner Wellington Chen at 44:52: "I think that would be nice is my point." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk&t=2692s. Chair Lisa Kersavage at 45:45: "The planning of the party wall." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk&t=2745s. Chair Lisa Kersavage at 46:05: "Is it feasible to keep more of the party wall? I'm sure it is. That's not what's been proposed." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk&t=2765s. Chair Lisa Kersavage at 46:05: "Because our primary interest has always been is this something that's conspicuous, has an impact as viewed from the street and that would really only occur through window openings which in this case they're on the small size." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk&t=2765s. Chair Lisa Kersavage at 46:56: "More or less as a full reconstruction of that party wall." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk&t=2816s.

Correction, September 11, 2026

This piece replaces an earlier version published on September 2, 2026 under the same slug. Four things in that version were wrong. The 1866 architect was named as Gage Ensley. No document pulled for this report spells the name that way. The hearing calendar and the 1969 designation report both read Gage Inslee. The two houses were attributed to that architect without qualification. The designation report documents Inslee for No. 59 only, calls Nos. 57 and 61 undoubtedly Inslee's, and says Inslee's plans may also have been used for the rest of the row west to No. 69. It separately names Bartlett Smith, a builder, as the builder of Nos. 63 to 67. The flat attribution belongs to the Commission's calendar rather than to the designation report, and this version says which document says what. The stoop at No. 63 was described as stripped away. The original stoop was removed in the twentieth century, but it was rebuilt in 2000 in brownstone with replicated ironwork, under the LPC approvals dated 1999 to 2001 that the motion itself cites at 48:02 on the recording. The house on Charles Street today has a stoop. The approval was reported as binding the applicant to verticalize and delineate the rear addition. The motion Kersavage read carries no such condition. It asks the applicant to work with staff on creating a minimal and simple sense of separation between the two town houses at the rear yard addition, and it asks nothing at all about the party wall. Two further items are recorded here for completeness. Neither was in the version published on September 2, which named no commissioner and no counsel. Both are corrections to this version, made after a read-back of the Commission's recording, and both change what this piece says about the hearing. A line at 44:47, that the approval does not vary from prior approvals, was carried in drafting as unattributed between Deputy Counsel John Weiss and a commissioner. The read-back establishes it as Weiss continuing an answer that begins at 44:35 at 44:35 on the recording. Commissioner Goldblum's interior concern was drafted as a general objection to gutting the interior. The read-back has it as a narrower point. The concern is that open space would be visible from the rear of the combined house, through the windows, once the party wall came out at 36:44 on the recording. That is the difference between an argument for interior fabric and an argument about a sightline, and the reading of the hearing in this version turns on it.

How this was reported

I attended the September 1 hearing at 253 Broadway and photographed Charles Street the same afternoon. Quotations are taken from the Commission's recording of the session, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk, at the timestamps linked above, and may be checked against it. The Commission's captions are machine generated and are not the source. Hesitation markers and stammered repeats have been removed from quotations. Three things are not settled and are reported as such above. The modifications attached to the approval will appear on the issued Certificate of Appropriateness, which was not in the city permit record as of the September 7 refresh. The earlier cases in which counsel stated the position on interiors were not named at the hearing. Whether any interior designation covers these houses was not raised. Corrections are posted here with the date and what changed.

Municipal record: LPC-27-01049

Property address: 63-65 Charles Street, Greenwich Village Historic District, Manhattan. Docket: LPC-27-01049, Certificate of Appropriateness, heard September 1, 2026 as public hearing item one. The item was read in against Block 621, Lot 68. In the LPC permit dataset No. 63 is Lot 67 and No. 65 is Lot 68. District: Greenwich Village Historic District, LP-0489, designated April 29, 1969, https://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/0489.pdf. Hearing calendar: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/lpc/downloads/pdf/calendar/09_01_26.pdf. Application history for the row, Block 621 Lots 63 to 73: https://data.cityofnewyork.us/resource/dpm2-m9mq.json. Recording of record: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9j9UWHDaZk. Action: approved. Motion read by Chair Lisa Kersavage and seconded by Vice Chair Angie Master. Vote recorded on the video as nine in favor, none opposed. Commissioner names verified against https://www.nyc.gov/site/lpc/about/commissioners.page. Prior approvals cited in the motion: LPC approvals dated 1999 to 2001 for the stoop, rear yard addition and stair bulkhead at No. 63. Architects as introduced at the hearing: Steven Harris Architects, with Steven Harris and Abir Ahmad present. That is the team as named from the floor and is not a statement of the architect of record on the filing. Photographs by Daniel Flugger, September 1, 2026.

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