NYU plans renovations to playhouse

The Provincetown Playhouse, which once featured the works of famed playwrights Eugene O'Neill and Edna St. Vincent Millay, is now slated to house new faculty research centers for the NYU School of Law.

NYU spokeswoman Alicia Hurley announced that buildings at addresses 133 to 139 MacDougal St. - which is currently the site of an office and an empty apartment building, in addition to the Playhouse itself - will be redeveloped with the building's cultural history in mind.

In addition to the law buildings, a press statement about the proposed construction stressed that the university will construct a new theater on the site.

Hurley said that the rest of the site will be "a low-scale, contextual, brick building" that will house the new research centers. The new façade will be constructed to look as it did before the 1940 renovations - as if it was four separate buildings.

In addition, NYU will protect and restore the 1940s-era façade, even though the original from the time of the Provincetown Players, the famed theater group led by O'Neill, was torn down in the 1940s.

Despite this, some think the Provincetown Playhouse needs to be preserved as it is.

"The Provincetown Playhouse is one of the most important sites in the history of 20th century American theater," said Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation. And, Berman added, the Playhouse has experienced an "unbelievable amount" of history since its last renovation 70 years ago.

After the 1940s renovation, he said, the theater hosted the works of such playwrights as Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee and Charles Busch.

Berman said that NYU had also pledged to support the South Village Historical District, in which the theater is located. And NYU had agreed to certain planning principles - crafted in conjunction with the Community Task Force on NYU Development and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer - that would encourage the use of existing buildings before new ones were constructed.

But while the Village fights once again with the university, some NYU students are numb to the issue.

"I guess it's just like the Poe House all over again," said Steinhardt freshman Brittany Rawson, who is studying social studies education, referring to the law school's redevelopment of a house on West Third Street where writer Edgar Allan Poe once lived. "People are angry, and then it happens, and they forget it happens."

Lindsey Thomas is a staff writer. E-mail her at citystate@nyunews.com.