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Washington Square Village

Washington Square Village is a vestige of the first wave of urban renewal in the mid-20th century. It is a six-building, 2,004-unit complex that opened in 1958 as one of Robert Moses' notorious superblock slum clearance projects. Although it was originally intended as middle-class housing in an attempt to encourage families to stay in the city rather than move to the suburbs, a soft rental market led to its sale to New York University in 1964. As units became vacant, they were transferred for use by graduate students and faculty. NYU also built University Plaza on a superblock to the south of WSV that was not yet developed at the time of the acquisition of the entire complex.

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