For a quarter-century, Andrew Berman has stood as one of New York City’s most formidable and polarizing preservationist figures. As the executive director of Village Preservation—formerly known as the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation—Berman has built a career on halting real estate developments, capping building heights, and expanding historic districts to shield lower Manhattan from the forces of modern modernization. However, as New York faces an unprecedented housing affordability crisis, Berman’s staunchly anti-development stances have increasingly positioned him not as a heroic David fighting a corporate Goliath, but as the quintessential NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) in a rapidly shifting, YIMBY-dominated (Yes In My Back Yard) political landscape.
The Battle Over the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center
The tensions defining contemporary New York urban planning are currently concentrated around the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center. Located at the corner of Clarkson and Varick streets, the 118-year-old red-brick colossus is a striking piece of local history. Designed by the architectural firm of James Renwick Jr.—renowned for the Smithsonian Institution Building and St. Patrick’s Cathedral—the structure was originally built as a public bathhouse to provide washing facilities for turn-of-the-century tenement dwellers. Featuring the same advanced tile-arch system found in Grand Central Terminal, the building has served as a cultural touchstone, appearing in classic films such as Raging Bull and Kids, while housing a vibrant Keith Haring mural along its outdoor pool wall.
Landmarked by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2010, the recreation center has nonetheless remained closed since 2020. City engineers evaluating the structure during planned renovations determined it was structurally unsound, leading to official proposals for its complete demolition.
Berman views the proposed demolition as an unacceptable erasure of urban continuity. "There’s a lot of connected history here, that’s why the city landmarked this," Berman said while inspecting the site. "And now they want to knock it down, ripping from the neighborhood history, a sense of place, a sense of continuity and connection to what came before."
Yet, city officials and housing advocates present a contrasting perspective. Directly across the street, preparations are underway for Hudson Mosaic, a 35-story development slated to feature nearly 280 units of 100 percent affordable housing alongside a brand-new, state-of-the-art municipal recreation center featuring a regulation-size pool operated by the Parks Department. While Berman remains skeptical of developers’ promises and argues the scale of the new building is out of context, critics argue his opposition epitomizes a broader pattern: prioritizing architectural nostalgia over urgent human needs.
The Evolution of New York City Preservationism
Berman’s tenure at the helm of Village Preservation began in early 2002, a period when New York City was experiencing a post-9/11 building boom driven by aggressive pro-development policies under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. During this era, preservationists were widely embraced by local residents fighting to retain the human scale of neighborhoods against the encroachment of luxury glass towers. Berman’s successful efforts to block aggressive expansions by New York University and to secure historic landmark status for sites like the Stonewall Inn and the Pyramid Club earned him high-profile accolades, including a spot in Vanity Fair’s Hall of Fame.
Over the last two decades, however, the city’s economic and demographic realities have undergone a tectonic shift. As housing costs soared to record highs, a new political coalition of younger, rent-burdened urban residents coalesced around YIMBY principles, championing housing abundance, zoning reform, and transit-oriented development. To these housing advocates, Berman’s ongoing efforts to block rezonings and limit new construction are no longer seen as heroic resistance, but as exclusionary zoning tactics that protect affluent property owners at the expense of regional affordability.
"He is one of the biggest NIMBYs in lower Manhattan and one of the main impediments to progress on housing policy," said Ryder Kessler, co-founder of Abundance New York. Kessler argues that preservationist playbooks originally deployed by figures like Jane Jacobs to protect working-class neighborhoods from destructive highways are now being repurposed by wealthy homeowners to block affordable senior housing and sustainable infrastructure.
Academic Critique and Zoning Realities
The debate over Berman’s legacy touches on broader academic discussions surrounding New York City’s strict zoning and landmarking laws. According to urban planning experts, nearly a quarter of all buildings in Manhattan currently fall under some form of landmark protection, with figures exceeding 70 percent in neighborhoods like the Upper West Side and Greenwich Village.
David Schleicher, a professor at Yale Law School and an expert on New York’s zoning regulations, contends that the city’s aggressive preservation framework has severely constrained housing supply. "If you want to know what life was like in 1750 or in 1900, it’s not like preserving the West Village will tell you that much," Schleicher noted. "Landmarking just preserves pretty things. And it’s not like preserving the buildings keeps neighborhoods as they were. If that were the case, the West Village would be full of artists and folk singers."
Data underscores this critique. Economic analyses indicate that the ten New York neighborhoods with the highest concentration of historic district coverage lost more than 1,000 housing units over the past decade. Conversely, adjacent areas outside landmark boundaries added nearly 65,000 units over the same period. Critics point out that as the West Village accumulated historic districts—expanding from its initial 1969 designation into the Meatpacking District in 2003 and the Lower West Side in 2006—it transformed from an accessible enclave for immigrants and artists into some of the most expensive real estate on the planet.
The Political Shift Toward Abundance
Berman, for his part, rejects the notion that historic preservation is driving housing scarcity. He attributes skyrocketing housing costs to macroeconomic wealth inequality and the concentration of capital among ultra-wealthy buyers rather than a lack of market-rate construction. Pointing to the newly constructed "City of Yes Tower" on 13th Street—a 538-foot luxury condominium development enabled by recent municipal zoning overhauls—Berman argues that building high-end units does not trickle down to lower-income renters.
"There’s this somewhat bizarre idea, which is that it could just increase the amount of housing we produce, no matter how expensive it is or how costly it is, it’s going to bring prices down for everybody," Berman said. "Which is basically like saying if we built more Maseratis, the price of a Chevy would go down."
Pro-housing economists counter this analogy by noting that artificial caps on automotive production during supply chain crises historically drove up used car prices, and that expanding overall supply—including luxury vehicles—ultimately stabilizes the broader market.
City officials have increasingly leaned into the YIMBY framework, balancing heritage preservation with the pressing mandate to construct tens of thousands of new housing units under municipal initiatives like the Adams administration’s "City of Yes" zoning reforms. Regarding the Tony Dapolito site, mayoral spokespersons have emphasized that the city’s comprehensive plan will deliver a modernized aquatic complex, an expanded recreation center at 388 Hudson, the preservation of the Keith Haring mural, and much-needed public open space along the Clarkson Street corridor.
As New York City navigates the delicate equilibrium between honoring its storied past and accommodating its future residents, Andrew Berman remains steadfast in his mission. Whether viewed as an indispensable guardian of New York’s cultural soul or the last major obstacle to a more affordable city, his battles continue to define the ongoing war over the soul of the urban landscape.
