The Weatherman Townhouse Revisited

The Observer takes a look back at the old days of 18 West 11th Street. The townhouse between 5th and 6th Avenues in Greenwich Village has a sordid history involving the Weatherman organization; "On March 6, 1970, five members of the radical Weather Underground accidentally detonated dynamite at a makeshift bomb factory in the basement. The bombs were, according to rumors, destined for a military compound in New Jersey and for Butler Library at Columbia University." The explosions leveled the townhouse and killed three group members. Meanwhile "residents of the neighboring building, including actor Dustin Hoffman and his family, never returned to their homes." These days, the stigma attached has warn off, one realtor selling a nearby townhouse noted, “They don’t care about a building’s history...They just care if it’s pretty.” Not everyone thinks the reconstructed No. 18 is pretty, however, one passerby said, “It doesn’t fit in the face of the neighborhood at all. That forceful geometric shape is too modern in a bad way.” [Photo cred.]

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By Jen Carlson in News on October 20, 2008 3:25 PM

Comments [rss]

chris lee

They felt the US Government had declared war on it's own people by forcefully drafting young people to kill and be killed in an undeclared war.

fleshtone

@Mr Mel

Those aren't "kills". Killing yourself by accident and killing someone else intentionally are two very different things. I see what you're saying, but those deaths are not the same as if people had been killed by the bombs they placed to protest the war. At stake is the context of what the group was about, which, for all its faults, was not killing.

Mr Mel

Sorry jacque, I didn't know what j/k meant, I just looked it up.

Larry

BUY AND FLIP!

JacqueMehoff

I was joking mr. mel

see my J/K below.

I'm just wondering does the flyover states know that ayers is not black, and does not have an Afro or a black upraised fist.

I was surprised that some thought it could be Lou reed's band.

Mr Mel

how could a black terrorist org afford a place like that?

They weren't a black orginization. They were in fact a spin- off of the SDS. The town house was owned by an advertising executive one of whose offspring was a member. From what I remember they were upper middle class rich kids.

Mr Mel

"The weathermen never killed anybody"

What about the 3 people in the house. Members or not they;re just as dead.

fleshtone

Why the stigma? The weathermen never killed anybody. They even made sure their target buildings were evacuated. I don't advocate violence, but this group (Ayers especially) is not worth talking about, at least in this context. It's still OK to oppose illegal wars, right?

doo

The Columbia thing was pretty much personally motivated. That's where a large portion of the Weatherman kids became radicals in the first place. Much of their original radicalization had to do with their small-time beefs with the Columbia administration.

spnder

I remember the first time I walked down that block. My friend and I had heard the Weathermen house was on that block and we were wondering aloud how we'd know which one it was when we saw #18. Yeah, pretty easy to pick out.

JacqueMehoff

how could a black terrorist org afford a place like that?

J/k.

Pull My Finger

Nice to see where Obamas friends live.

ThisCharmingMan

A nice lady from Alaska told me Obama lives here.

bagelman

why would they want to hit the butler library? there must be better targets than books, even if they're evil imperialist books for inheritors of the ruling class...