The buildings were designed by modern architects James Ingo Freed and I. M. Pei, and they surround a central plaza featuring the Bust of Sylvette sculpture by Carl Nesjar and Pablo Picasso.

The original towers and central courtyard were protected as city landmarks in 2008, and the John A. Paulson Center was developed on the Coles site between 2016 and 2022.

[3][4] Meanwhile, the urban planner Robert Moses—who chaired the Mayor's Commission on Slum Clearance—was looking to redevelop parts of Greenwich Village by the early 1950s.

[7] The following year, the New York City Board of Estimate allowed the committee to request federal funds for several sites, including Washington Square South.

[6][8] The New York Times and The American City praised the Washington Square South project's bold scale but also warned about its impact on the street grid and surrounding buildings.

[13][14] In August 1953, Moses announced a revised proposal for 2,148 apartments on a 14-acre (5.7 ha) site bounded by West Broadway (now LaGuardia Place) and Fourth, Mercer, and Houston streets.

[13][15] Though the street-widening was later dropped,[18] the city government retained ownership of a narrow strip on the eastern side of West Broadway, facing the superblock.

[19] Supporters of the Washington Square Southeast proposal hoped it would preserve much of Greenwich Village's character,[20] but they were outnumbered by opponents, who argued that the site was not a blighted area.

[17][21] Hortense Gabel, a lawyer for 17 groups who opposed the project, requested that the Board of Estimate give them time to study the plans.

[30] An injunction preventing further land acquisition was placed in February 1955, after the city was sued by a business owner who was being displaced,[31] but a New York Supreme Court justice dismissed the suit.

[39] The City Planning Commission voted that July to rezone the Washington Square Southeast site, allowing development to proceed.

[46] The reason for the cancellation is unclear; sources variously cite difficulties in leasing apartments, as well as the fact that the developers would have had to pay the federal government.

[76][77] Two local political candidates, Ed Koch and Martin M. Berger, suggested that the University Village site be auctioned off, though the Housing and Redevelopment Board rejected that idea.

[79]By late 1962, the plans had been changed again;[56][78] the cooperative was supposed to be a seven-story building, while the two towers for NYU faculty and students would be 30 stories high.

[56][61] Freed said that the development of three identical towers would save money, free up additional space, and reduce the amount of design work required.

[105] In November 1967, NYU commissioned the artist Carl Nesjar to create an enlarged version of Pablo Picasso's sculpture Bust of Sylvette for the complex's courtyard.

[111][112] In 1973, the architect Dan Tully submitted plans to the New York City government for a sports center just east of the University Village towers, between Mercer and Bleecker streets.

[116] The sports center was postponed due to a lack of funding, as well as opposition from local residents who wanted to preserve University Village's dog run and playground.

[120] Designed by Wank Adams Slavin Associates, the structure was named after Jerome Coles, a businessman who had provided over $1 million for the sports center's development.

[116] NYU bought the one-story Morton Williams supermarket at the northwest corner of the site, near LaGuardia Place and Bleecker Street, in November 2000.

[127][130] At the time, NYU wanted to redevelop the supermarket site after Morton Williams's lease expired in 2006,[130] and it opposed the landmark designation.

[131][132] NYU planned to replace the courtyard with low-rise structure with a roof garden,[133] and it wanted to build a fourth tower on the site, which elicited local opposition,[134][135] The LPC agreed in February 2008 to host hearings on designating University Village as a city landmark.

[131][139] Sylvette David, whose likeness had been used for the sculpture in the building's central courtyard, was among dozens of people who submitted testimony in favor of the designation.

[147][148] In addition to general opposition over the size of the structures, there were objections to the relocation of University Village's dog run[149] and the loss of recreational space.

[159][160] In January 2014, New York Supreme Court judge Donna Mills issued an injunction blocking much of the NYU 2031 plan, citing the fact that part of the superblock could be considered parkland because it had been used for that purpose for so long.

[165] NYU hired the architectural firms Davis Brody Bond and KieranTimberlake to design a new building on the superblock's eastern end in December 2014.

[111][112][187] It was sculpted by the Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar in 1968 based on a design by Pablo Picasso, who had created a 2-foot-high (0.61 m) folded-metal version of the sculpture in 1954.

[150] Just north of 505 LaGuardia, a concrete stairway ascends east of the western walkway, connecting to a west–east path that continues to Wooster Street.

[99][115][201] When the buildings were constructed, Pei described the plain shear walls as "packages of space", which helped separate the gridded facades on the different elevations.

[114][214] Herbert Muschamp of The New York Times wrote that University Village was one of the city's few towers-in-the-park complexes that "contributed to the rich diversity of the cityscape".