Plan to raze historic theater questioned

Preservationists are protesting a plan by New York University to tear down a theater where playwrights from Eugene O'Neill to David Mamet saw their works produced.

But NYU officials say the five-story building that houses the Provincetown Playhouse is not architecturally significant and can't be retrofitted into the office space they need.

"You can't convert it into office space without doing heavy shoring up of the building," Alicia Hurley, the university's vice president for government and community affairs, said Tuesday.

Hurley said the building's cultural significance will be honored by preserving and restoring the entrance to the theater on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, and the 170-seat theater will be replaced by a new theater.

The theater is named for the Provincetown Players, which was founded on Cape Cod and took up residence in Greenwich Village in 1916. Among the plays it presented in the early 1920s were O'Neill's "Emperor Jones" and "Hairy Ape." Plays by Mamet, Edward Albee and Samuel Beckett were produced there in later years.

NYU bought the building in 1984 and renovated the theater to use for school productions in the 1990s. Besides the theater, NYU used the building for graduate student housing and some offices.

NYU plans to raze the building — originally four separate 19th-century row houses — and replace it with a slightly larger structure that would house faculty offices and conference rooms.

Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, called the playhouse "A Mecca of 20th-century American theater."

"The playhouse is considered the birthplace of off-Broadway theater," he said. "To many people, demolishing it is sacrilege."

The preservation society has spearheaded a letter-writing campaign to urge NYU to reconsider its plan, and it hopes to mobilize neighborhood residents to attend a May 28 meeting of the local community board.

"We believe that there will be an overwhelming turnout expressing opposition to the demolition," Berman said.

NYU does not need government approval to demolish the building, which has not been designated a city landmark.

"This is ... a very sensitive and sensible proposal," Hurley said.