CNS News– After four years on and off the market, the Weather Underground townhouse at 18 W. 11th St. in Greenwich Village has not sold 54 years after the explosion. StreetEasy reported that the Gold Coast’s oddly angled modern property between Fifth and Sixth Avenues sold quietly for $18 million in October 2023. Relisting this property was not addressed by Compass’s Clinton Stowe.
New owners may fix the address. In late 2019, WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey wanted $21 million for the 21-foot tower. The COVID-19 outbreak compelled him to remove the listing six months later. He spent $12m in 2015. The $50,000 monthly rent and 2021 tenure didn’t help McKelvey sell the 6,000-square-foot property.
The home listed for $18 million and $19 million between early 2022 and late 2023, records show. An alternative situation 53 years ago killed three farm kids. The extreme leftist Weather Underground accidentally detonated a bomb in this 1840s townhouse around noon on March 6, 1970. Adman James Wilkerson and Audrey, his second wife, owned the St. Kitts vacation home.
At Swarthmore College, Wilkerson’s daughter Cathy joined the SDS Weather Underground to fight imperialism and racism. She and four classmates asked her father to let them remain at the 10-room estate while he went. Made explosives for Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library with Kathy Boudin, Diana Oughton, Terry Robbins, and Ted Gold.
NYC’s Weather Underground townhouse still hasn’t found a buyer — 54 years after fatal blast https://t.co/Ath8V5yxkM pic.twitter.com/akpJcjVDYj
— New York Post (@nypost) March 6, 2024
The final three were murdered in a basement blast due to an electrical attachment issue. Over 20 years after his 1981 armored truck robbery, Boudin died of cancer in 2022. After 11 months of a three-year sentence, only 79-year-old Wilkerson survives the explosion. The Wilkerson house was dismantled. After the blast destroyed the facade, newspaper images showed smoke from the large hole.
The mansion was extensively rebuilt. The vacant site cost $80,000, or $653,000 today, to architect Hugh Hardy, who died in 2017, and Steuben Glass CEO Francis Mason three months after the disaster. Beams supported several homes after the house was removed. Hardy desired a unique two-family home. The 45-degree book-like West 11th Street front demonstrates how it happened.
The city Landmarks Preservation Commission approved amended plans a year before the explosion because the block was historic. The design passed one vote despite community objections. Eight years passed with the lot empty. The late Pennsylvania couple David and Norma Langworthy bought the site from Hardy and Mason for $80,000 in 1978 to preserve the plan.
The split-level structure and sloping exterior give the inside a 10-story sense. The Langworthys owned the mansion until 2012 when Norma’s estate sold it for $9.25 million. Modern listing photos show McKelvey hired VonDalwig Architecture to open the divided levels with glass to create an atrium. Restoration has massive floor-to-ceiling windows.
Read More News: Body Discovered During Historic New Jersey Bed and Breakfast Demolition!
Ohio: The Chick-Fil-A Owner Drove Across Several States to Statutory Rape a 15-Year-Old Girl!
False claim: Haley Plan Lowers Social Security Payouts for 82% of Americans!
The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation’s veteran executive director Andrew Berman told The Post that the home will always remind them of the tragedy that prompted it. Berman adds, “The Weather Underground explosion is now as much a part of the [historic district] history as anything else, and it deserves to be remembered.”