From Scouting New York:Over the past few months, I’ve been getting letters from readers about an abandoned school in Garden City, Long Island, called St. Paul’s, on the verge of being demolished. Last Friday, I hopped the train with my bike and camera to have a look for myself.
A passionate public hearing regarding the matter was held on August 19th, and a final hearing will occur on September 30th. A town vote will then be taken, and St. Paul’s fate will be decided.
Suddenly, as I was taking pictures, it dawned on me: maybe the reason Garden City is willing to demolish St. Paul’s is because they’ve got similarly amazing buildings strewn all over town! Maybe clocktowers and gothic spires and beautiful brick work are commonplace in Garden City, to the point where one building won’t be missed.
I decided to take a little tour on my bike in search of something – anything! – as grand and impressive as St. Paul’s.
(This is where it gets good. Click the link, you won't be disappointed.)
5 comments:
Honestly, I think the powers that be want nothing but depressing, ugly, poorly built buildings. Someone once said architecturally dazzling buildings have souls (am paraphrasing). Well this one has a soul.
Garden City doesn't care for its history and beauty in this case: St Paul's stands in the way of getting the taxes that a for-profit anything would get in replacement for this non-profit school building.
GC is a beautiful neighborhood... sure there are few ugly ones, but those are definitley the exception..its a real stretch to call the whole town crappy.
i do think it is deplorable that they are considering demolition of this beauty..and that "election" was definitely rigged when you consider that 3 choices were given, two of which split the preservation vote.
With Uniondals gang ridden slum to the south and Westbury Mexico to the east the old money is fleeing GC like rats out a sinking ship.
They are taking a page from LIC & Astoria. There were many old beautiful houses like those shown at the end of the list that were all over Hallet's Cove and Old Astoria up until 10 years ago thanks to the self-serving short-sidedness and total corruption of the Bloomberg administration. There might be 2 or 3 left.
What was built in their place was total crap, out of place and are overburdening the infrastructure here and contributing to flooding and sewage backup. They are decaying because there is no tight knit community anymore here. Absentee landlords are doing this.
Some people think this is progress to drive out the middle class.
Those people don't live here.
What these people don't realize is that this will eventually undermine the area and drive out the people who actually do care, leaving only the ones that don't, which is happening as we speak.
Greed. Decay. Neglect. Crime.
St. Paul's is truly a beautiful building and what would be useful for that community is precisely an assisted living facility as Long Island's residents age and cannot afford to pay the high taxes for their homes there.
It's sad what has happened all over New York at the hands of our politicians and special interests. Truly a sad place to be these days.
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