6. MacDougal Sullivan Gardens Historic District

According to the Landmarks Preservation Commission report, “the visitor, seeing this small historic district, a few blocks south of Washington Square Park, for the first time, would find that he was transported back to a mid-Nineteenth century street scene.” Shown in panorama, as captured above, the consistent facades of MacDougal Sullivan Gardens are painted in contrasting but harmonious colors, hiding a communal garden behind that runs almost the length of the block.

The LPC report contends that the survival of this district owes is owed  to the “policies of of the Low Family, which owned it for 125 years, and the far-sighted philosophies of a real estate developer in the period after World War I. Both ran counter to prevailing real estate policies of the time.” The gardens were joined together by William Sloane Coffin, whose real estate company purchased the block in 1920.