The Landmarks Preservation Commission

[stache]

This building looks like crap.

[brianac]

Upper East Side

As Towers Loom, a Hoped-for Line in the Sand

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
The Parge House, at 6th Street and Lexington Avenue, a candidate for protection.

By GREGORY BEYER
Published: August 15, 2008

SINCE 1962, Elaine and Hyman Weitzen have been happily ensconced in a white stucco house at 65th Street and Lexington Avenue. Ms. Weitzen is the founding director of the American Friends of the Israel Museum, and the house has a museumlike quality to it: a wealth of paintings, drawings and sculptures has left very few surfaces undecorated.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Elaine and Hyman Weitzen have lived in the white stucco house since 1962.

On the wall of her fourth-floor office hang framed photographs of Ms. Weitzen meeting the Israeli prime ministers Golda Meir and David Ben-Gurion. And from her kitchen window Ms. Weitzen can look across Lexington Avenue and see some of the thin towers along Third Avenue that have lately been making Upper East Side preservationists nervous.

That nervousness, as it relates to Ms. Weitzen’s building, which is known as the Parge House for its whimsical exterior “parging,” or designs in plaster, stems from the fact that it lies just outside the Upper East Side Historic District, which covers about 57 blocks total from Fifth Avenue to Third Avenue, between 59th and 79th Streets.

In July 2007, the preservation group Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts submitted a proposal to the city to add to the district 197 buildings — including the Parge House — along Lexington Avenue and side streets from 60th to 65th Street and from 72nd to 75th Street. The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission is studying the proposal.

There are hopes, but few illusions, of protecting every building in the proposed areas, which cover parts of 17 blocks, and in recent weeks preservationists have felt a jolt of renewed urgency. One of the buildings they hoped to protect, a brownstone directly opposite Ms. Weitzen’s that was built in 1922 and known as the Kean House, will soon make way for a 15-story residential building, according to permits filed with the city’s Buildings Department.

“If Kean House goes, and the residential building is built, it could create a domino effect for the whole area,” said Seri Worden, the executive director of the preservation group. “A historic block would effectively be dismantled and ruined.”

The Upper East Side Historic District was designated in 1981, and with a few exceptions, buildings on Lexington Avenue, which Ms. Worden called the neighborhood’s “main street,” are not afforded protection. For Ms. Worden and her colleagues, Lexington Avenue has more in common with the designated district than with Third Avenue, whose architecturally unremarkable towers symbolize a style and level of development they fear will spread to Lexington’s vulnerable blocks.

Fredric Bell, the executive director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, said the expansion would preserve historic buildings but might also inhibit worthwhile development. “There will be projects that won’t happen,” Mr. Bell said. “Will it slow things down? Yes.”

Lithgow Osborne, who works at Casa Del Bianco, a custom linens shop that rents space on the ground floor of Ms. Weitzen’s building at 65th and Lexington, expressed appreciation, tinged with regret, for the intersection one recent afternoon while leaving work.

“How rare is it in New York,” Mr. Osborne said, waiting on the sidewalk for the light to change, “for an intersection to be interesting from all angles?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/ny...ml?ref=thecity

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[Fabrizio]

Fredric Bell, the executive director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, said the expansion would preserve historic buildings but might also inhibit worthwhile development. “There will be projects that won’t happen,” Mr. Bell said. “Will it slow things down? Yes.”

Mr. Bell can go jump in a lake.

The "worthwhile" development for these blocks stopped long ago. Like right before WW2.

Would you rather look at another anonymous glass tower or brownstones, tenements and buildings like that shown above?

What exactly IS it, that gives this area it's cachet?

So why destoy it?

If I were living there, I'd be unapologetically: NIMBY

[Derek2k3]

I was going to disagree with you, believing that the new building could be worthwhile with the right architects...

but it's being designed by H. Thomas O' Hara!

http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/Jo...ssdocnumber=01

[philvia]

i like that building. keep it

[brianac]

Streetscapes | 20 West 44th Street

A Stately Structure, Where a Grand Idea Failed


Left, American Architect and Building News/Office for Metropolitan History; G. Paul Burnett, via The New York Times

HALLS OF LEARNING The structure at 20 West 44th Street was built as the Berkeley School for boys, left in 1892, but was acquired by the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen in 1899. It extended the building to seven stories in 1905, which is how it appears today, right.

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY
Published: September 5, 2008

SINCE 1899, the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen has occupied a stately Renaissance-style building at 20 West 44th Street, which was built in 1891 as a boys’ school, and which nearly doubled in size in 1905. Now, through a transfer arrangement, the society is selling unused air rights so a new building, several hundred feet away, can expand upward. That tower will rise 54 stories around the corner at Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street.


Top, E. Idell Zeisloft, “The New Metropolis”/Office for Metropolitan History; G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times

The school had a ground-floor drill hall, top in 1899, which the society uses as a library, bottom.

In 1880, John S. White, a Harvard classics scholar, founded the private Berkeley School, which emphasized athletics and military drill along with college preparatory courses. Eleven years later, his enterprise had prospered, and he built a school building four stories high and 100 feet wide at 20 West 44th Street, on a block then emerging as a seat of private clubs.

In 1890, The New York Times predicted that the new structure, designed by Lamb & Rich, would be the “finest scholastic building in America.”

According to The Times, the plan at the school was to carve a hardwood desk with the name of any boy who was “perfect in all his studies for a year,” a custom at the Rugby School in England.

At a time when there were few models for private school architecture, Lamb & Rich gave the building the feel of a library or professional association, with great banks of windows on the second and third floors.

At the central section are two engaged columns, made not of single pieces or even drums of stone, but rather of individual terra-cotta blocks.

These support a broad frieze copied from that on the Parthenon. An anonymous reviewer in The Real Estate Record and Guide in 1891 considered the school “very successful” except for a few details, like the columns.

According to an 1893 article in a magazine called The Cosmopolitan, seniors in the school took five hours a week each of Greek, Latin, rhetoric and math, as well as English, French and science. Military practice was required for the 292 boys — the ground-floor drill hall is still intact, though it is now used as a library — and the cost was $350 per year. The 1893 edition of King’s Handbook of New York City reported that 90 percent of Berkeley graduates had gone to Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Columbia.
Athletic competition with other schools was keen, and in 1893 some young scholars from the nearby Cutler School, excited after a recent victory over Berkeley, used red and yellow paint to daub what The New York Tribune called “profane and ribald expressions” not only on the sidewalks in front of Berkeley, but also on Dr. White’s house a block away.

The next day there was retaliation in the form of purple ink splashed on the steps of Cutler.

Dr. White had expansive ambitions — he also organized and built an athletic club across the street to serve as a daytime gym for the school. But just as the new school building opened, in 1891, trouble surfaced with the athletic enterprise and he was sued for unpaid bills on the 44th Street club structure. In 1897, the club failed entirely.

Nevertheless, Dr. White embarked on other projects. In 1898, he sold the Berkeley School building, and organized a consortium to pay $900,000 for the old campus of Columbia College — the entire block from 49th to 50th Street between Park and Madison Avenues. His plan was to reuse some buildings as apartment houses, build private dwellings and use academic buildings for Berkeley and others, like the New York Society Library.

That project failed, and in 1903 Dr. White declared bankruptcy; $143,000 in debt, he had even pawned his watch, for $5, according to The Times.

The Berkeley School passed out of his hands, and by the 1910s the school had moved to an old brownstone on the Upper West Side.

In 1899, a more durable endeavor, the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, took over the old Berkeley building. Founded in 1785 to promote the welfare of artisans, it used the building for a large library and extensive course offerings, as it does today. In 1908, there were 546 students, mostly workmen, who took night courses like algebra, geometry, clay modeling and drafting for various specialties, like cornices and yachts.

In 1905, the society had the architect Ralph Townsend extend its building to seven stories, removing the stoop to create a ground-floor entrance.

The magnificent fire escapes also appear to date from that campaign.

Current views of the interior are posted at the group’s Web site, mechanicsinstitute.org.

Now RFR Holdings has plans for a new building at Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street, to be designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli. The tower will rise 54 stories, in part using an additional 60,000 square feet of air rights — about one-sixth of the tower’s total square footage — to be bought from the society in a transfer deal sanctioned by the Landmarks Commission. In turn, the society will make certain repairs and undertake ongoing maintenance.

E-mail: streetscapes@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/re...ref=realestate

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[stache]

I don't know if this is still the case, but a few years ago I saw an ad by the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, offering free computer classes to any member of a union.

[antinimby]

LPC Gets Bland
Beyer Blinder Belle partner is latest landmarks commissioner




Matt Chaban
09.04.2008

In his 35 years at Beyer Blinder Belle, managing partner Frederick Bland has become one of the city’s foremost preservation architects. He has worked on such prominent projects as Grand Central Terminal, Rockefeller Center, Ellis Island, and, most recently, the refinery component of the New Domino complex in Williamsburg. But as of today, he will begin shaping the city’s historic fabric on a much grander scale as the newest member of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

“It certainly fits my skill sets and my interests,” Bland told AN after his appointment was affirmed at a City Council committee hearing this morning. Bland will replace Jan Pokorny, the former commission chair and preservationist pioneer who had been serving in absentia for the past year or so before passing away in May. The council also reappointed commissioners Joan Gerner and Christopher Moore.

Robert Tierney, the current chair of the commission, commended all three colleagues and their commitment to preservation in the city. “The mayor has really strengthened the commission with these appointments,” he said in brief remarks at the council chambers.

For a moment, it seemed as though Bland might be too qualified to join the commission when Diana Reyna, chair of the Rules, Privileges, and Elections Committee, pointed out the potential for conflicts of interest. But after a quick review of his signed agreement with the city, which the Conflict of Interest Board approved, Reyna gave her assent. The agreement stipulates that Bland will recuse himself from any decisions involving his firm as well as any that could involve a financial interest.

Bland said that he will miss the challenges offered by bringing projects before the commission, though joining it provides a world of new ones. “I, personally, have to be out of it, which is somewhat painful,” he said. “But I have also enjoyed a level of success bringing projects to the commission. I can’t do that anymore and I’ll miss it.”

Bland joined Beyer Blinder Belle upon graduating with a masters in architecture from Yale in 1972. At the same time, he moved to Brooklyn Heights—the city’s oldest historic district, as he is fond of pointing out. He eventually joined the Brooklyn Heights Association and became its president in the early 1990s. He has also been involved with the New York Fund for Architecture, the Evergreens Cemetery, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where he currently serves as the chair.

As the commission’s newest member, Bland hopes to push for greater enforcement, especially with the city’s historic properties growing at a rapid rate. “There’s a lot more ground to cover these days,” he said. Another concern is so-called demolition by neglect, when a landmark’s owner allows a property to deteriorate to the point where it must come down for safety reasons. Bland said the commission must work faster to force owners to maintain their historic buildings, which is within its legal power.

“He is an excellent choice in so many ways,” Alex Herrera of the Landmarks Conservancy told the committee in his testimony today. “Furthermore, he is levelheaded, fair-minded, and widely respected in the preservation community. We believe he is one of the best-equipped individuals to serve on the Landmarks Preservation Commission.”

Copyright © 2003-2008 | The Architect's Newspaper, LLC.

[brianac]

Ridgewood's iconic Mathews buildings up for special status

BY NICHOLAS HIRSHON
Monday, September 15th 2008, 4:25 PM


Roomy Ridgewood flats that marked a historic departure from the infamously overcrowded tenements of the lower East Side may soon gain city landmark status.

Rows of the innovative dwellings - built between 1908 and 1911 by German developer Gustave X. Mathews - fall into a proposed 91-building district that would bar demolitions and major alterations.

City Councilman Anthony Como (R-Middle Village) vowed to back an impending move to landmark the Mathews flats, which were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

"It's actually very rare to see blocks upon blocks of very consistent buildings like that," said Mary Beth Betts, research director of the city Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Betts said the commission hopes to designate the area - bounded largely by Forest Ave., Woodbine St., Fairview Ave. and Linden St. - in the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2009.

The measure would then move to the Council. Como, who won a June special election and is running for re-election against Democrat Elizabeth Crowley in November, supported landmarking as a way to maintain "the wonderful character that Ridgewood has to offer."

In the city's statement of significance on the Mathews flats, Landmarks officials described the Renaissance and Romanesque Revival structures - with iron-spotted brickwork and metal cornices - as "strikingly cohesive."

The three-story, six-apartment buildings presented a new tenement model that emphasized better living conditions for working-class immigrants arriving in the early 20th century.

Just a few years after the flats were completed, the city had such high regard for them that examples went on display at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

In 2000, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated a nearby collection of houses in a one-block historic district on Stockholm St. between Woodward and Onderdonk Aves.

But civic leader Paul Kerzner pushed the city to landmark the entire National Register list of nearly 3,000 sites in the Ridgewood area.

Como promised to consider lending his support to such a move.

Councilwoman Diana Reyna (D-Williamsburg), who represents small parts of Ridgewood on the National Register, did not return messages seeking comment

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...ings_up_f.html

© Copyright 2008 NYDailyNews.com

[brianac]

Two More Buildings on Lower East Side Are Landmarked

By PETER KIEFER, Staff Reporter of the Sun | September 17, 2008


Even as the Bloomberg administration is pushing for a rezoning of the Lower East Side, the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission is extending landmark protection status to more and more buildings in the area.



Public National Bank of New York building at 106 Avenue C. 9 (Konrad Fiedler)


The Wheatsworth Factory at 444 East 10th Street. 9 (Konrad Fiedler)

Yesterday, Landmarks designated two new Lower East Side buildings — the Wheatsworth Bakery and the Public National Bank — as landmarks.

That brings to six the total number of Lower East Side buildings that have been designated as landmarks over the past year.

The Wheatsworth Bakery and the Public National Bank were two of six sites that were given landmark protection yesterday by the commission.

A spokeswoman for Landmarks, Lisi de Bourbon, said the designations on the Lower East Side were incidental to the Planning Commission's plans for a rezoning. "The Bloomberg administration is working on several fronts to preserve New York's distinctive neighborhoods. We usually work closely with the planning department, but in this case we undertook a survey as an independent effort. These designations came out of that survey," she said.

Situated at 444 E. 10th St. between avenues C and D, the Wheatsworth Bakery, completed in 1928, served as a cracker and flour manufacturer.

The Milk Bone dog biscuit was invented and produced there.

The seven-story brick building was designed by J. Edwin Hopkins and closed in 1957. It now serves as a public storage warehouse.

The Public National Bank is situated at 106 Avenue C, at 7th Street.
The building was designed by the architect Eugene Schoen, who studied under one of the founding members of the Vienna Secession, the architect Josef Hoffmann.

The commission also approved the designation of two WPA-era pools and recreation centers — the Tompkinsville pool and recreation center and the Betsy Head pool and recreation center in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. A former firehouse in East Harlem designed by the firm of Napoleon LeBrun & Sons also received designation.

http://www.nysun.com/new-york/two-mo...ide-are/86028/

© 2008 The New York Sun

[brianac]

September 23, 2008, 4:51 pm

Court Protects Landmarks on Upper East Side

By Sewell Chan


The First Avenue Estate was a pioneering development built by the City and Suburban Homes Company from 1898 to 1915. (Photo: R. J. Mickelson for The New York Times)

A state judge has upheld a decision to designate two six-story buildings on the Upper East Side — part of a Progressive Era model tenement complex that offered airy and light-filled apartments to poor workers — as New York City landmarks. The legal status of the buildings has been the source of contention for many years.

Backing up a decision by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the City Council voted in February 2007 to protect the two buildings from demolition or alteration, reversing a 1990 decision by the Board of Estimate — which no longer exists — to strip the buildings of their landmark status.

The twin buildings, 429 East 64th Street and 430 East 65th Street, are part of the First Avenue Estate, a pioneering development built by the City and Suburban Homes Company from 1898 to 1915. Built in 1914 and 1915, they have central light courts; tan brick facades with stone, marble and terra cotta trim; original wrought-iron fire escapes; and stone portals framed by large brackets, carrying cornices that support the fire escape balconies. The two buildings share an enclosed side court.

In 1990, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the First Avenue Estate a landmark, but its owner, Peter S. Kalikow, objected. That led the Board of Estimate in August 1990 to strip two buildings in each complex of their landmark designation, one of its final acts before being abolished. After a lawsuit filed by tenants and neighborhood residents, the two Kalikow buildings won back their landmark designations in 1992, but the two in the First Avenue Estate remained unprotected. In November 2006, the landmarks commission finally voted to restore the two buildings’ landmark status — a decision affirmed a few months later by the City Council.

Stahl York Avenue Company, which now owns the buildings, filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court against the commission and the City Council.

“Stahl argued, among other things, that both buildings were ineligible for designation because of construction work that had stripped them of such architectural details as decorative ornament, original paint color and façade material,” the city’s Law Department said in a summary of the case.

In a decision on Friday, Justice Emily Jane Goodman rejected the lawsuit.

“This decision is a lesson to owners of buildings that are being considered as potential landmarks for their combined historic, cultural and architectural merit that there is no benefit to stripping the architectural elements of the potential landmark, even with a permit, pending landmark designation of the building,” said Virginia Waters, the city’s lead lawyer in the case.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...per-east-side/

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[londonlawyer]

September 23, 2008, 4:51 pm

Court Protects Landmarks on Upper East Side

By Sewell Chan


The First Avenue Estate was a pioneering development built by the City and Suburban Homes Company from 1898 to 1915. (Photo: R. J. Mickelson for The New York Times)....

I read this story with outrage. NY is so f..cked up. I lived around the corner from these filthy, disgusting buildings and can vouch as to how sh...tty they are. They're protected by the courts, and yet, the following gems are razed and no one cares:

1. Buildings from the very early 1800's just off Varick to make way for a lame hotel.

2. The 56th St. townhouses.

3. The Drake and perhaps townhouses on 57th Street.

4. Etc., etc.

This is BS.

[Alonzo-ny]

Agreed. Its dumb dumb dumb. NYC development needs a complete overhaul.

[lofter1]

Focusing on the City and Suburban Homes Company buildings:

So neither of you see any historic / educational value in preserving this specific complex (setting aside your attitude towards other properties and other LPC decisions)?

[lofter1]

This language makes this a very importatnt ruling for those concerned about preservation of historic structures:

“This decision is a lesson to owners of buildings that are being considered as potential landmarks for their combined historic, cultural and architectural merit that there is no benefit to stripping the architectural elements of the potential landmark, even with a permit, pending landmark designation of the building”