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.]