Nature wins out at the Ridgewood Reservoir

From QNS:

The city Parks Department recently took an important step toward preserving one of Ridgewood’s most beautiful places.

The Ridgewood Reservoir‘s status as a dam was reclassified by the New York City Parks Department after the agency completed a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) application, effectively lowering the site’s hazard rating from Class C “High Hazard” to Class A “Low Hazard.”

This new classification removes the need to create any breaches in the dam, allowing the Ridgewood Reservoir to remain as a natural treasure for all those who visit. Since the reservoir was taken off‐line as a water supply source, it has become a uniquely naturalized area in New York City, serving as an important ecological resource as well as a public recreation space.

The NYC Parks Department said it is fully committed to preserving the Ridgewood Reservoir as a natural open space for the community.

Ridgewood Reservoir nominated for National Register

From Save Ridgewood Reservoir:

NYC H2O has applied to the State and National Historic Registers for the Ridgewood Reservoir. You can write a letter of support and address it to the State Historic Preservation Office. Here's a link to a suggested letter.

New York State Division for Historic Preservation
Peebles Island State Park
P.O. Box 189
Waterford, NY 12188-0189

Ridgewood Reservoir Nomination by ridgewoodreservoir on Scribd

Sunnyside Gardens want SCA to preserve historic garage

From DNA Info:

Plans to build a much-needed middle school on the site of an old garage has drawn the ire of local preservationists who say the structure is too precious to be destroyed.

The city is looking to purchase the privately-owned property at 38-04 48th St., home to a two-story former garage, most recently occupied by a pool hall but now sits empty.

A 600-seat middle school is being proposed for the space, something local parents have been pushing to get for years to accommodate the growing number of children in the neighborhood.

But preservationists say the garage should be saved due to its historical significance. The building was designed by renowned urban planner Clarence Stein, one of two architects responsible for designing Sunnyside Gardens.

Though the building sits just outside the boundaries of the landmark historic district, it was designed as part of the project in the 1920s as a garage for Sunnyside Gardens residents to park their cars, according to architectural historian Barry Lewis.

"He didn't want to eat up the space in the city blocks with garages and driveways," said Lewis, who said the building was designed with features similar to the homes in Sunnyside Gardens, including its red brick.

"You'd be ripping out one of the major components of Clarence Stein's original plan," he said.

Developer plans to preserve Child Restaurant exterior

Via Facebook:

A G.A.H.S. Exclusive!

"At long last, attached, please find the rendering for project at 36-01 Broadway in Astoria.

"As you will see, all the architectural detail is being preserved. Additionally, I am proud to announce that we will be installing same limestone above the current DII Store at 3611 Broadway so that the façade appears unified.

"I would like to thank our architect Mr Walter Marin and his team for working hard and fast to prepare these drawings. I would also like to acknowledge the building owner for her cooperation and her guidance in satisfying the requests of the neighborhood.

"As stated previously, we at DII Stores are committed to the local Community and residents of Astoria and aspire to meet their wishes to preserve its history and culture. We are confident that our investment of time and money will be rewarded with increased patronage and continued loyalty. DII has been part of the Astoria Community for over 35 years, and we look forward to serving Astoria for generations to come.

"Please feel free to reach out with any questions or comments."

Morris Dweck, DII Stores

Preservation, Queens style

From George the Atheist

Big developer preserving existing housing?

From LIC Post:

The Related Companies have purchased two, nearly century-old residences in Astoria and Long Island City, with the intent to preserve the properties.

According to Department of Finance documents, Related bought 36-05 Vernon Blvd. for $3.4 million, and 5-16 47th Rd. for $3.1 million, from Silvershore Properties in July. Both are four-story, eight-unit buildings constructed in the '30s, per the DOF.

According to Related, the buildings will be preserved as “workforce housing.” Specifically, they will not be converted into luxury units, the spokesperson said.

Momentum builds to protect small rowhouses

From the NY Times:

Some blocks are graced by quaint two-bedroom, one-story rowhouses — with small front yards, tiny porches and peaked roofs. These houses have become the latest focus in a clash throughout New York between homeowners who want to develop their properties to the limits allowed by law, and preservationists lobbying for stronger laws to protect those properties from development.

The preservationists argue that single-family rowhouses imbue some neighborhoods — particularly in Queens — with their essential character. But under existing zoning laws, there is no specific designation for single-family rowhouses that provides protection against increasing the number of units, or against out-of-scale and out-of-character expansions.

“It’s an absolute disgrace,” said Richard Hellenbrecht, the vice president of the Queens Civic Congress, an umbrella association of more than 100 community groups. “Lovely, affordable homes being squeezed out by monstrosities.”

The architecture is secondary, said Paul Graziano, an urban planning consultant from Flushing. “What it is is affordable rowhouses of modest means, and for people of modest means.”

“It’s stuff worth protecting,” he said. “We’re talking about the basic character of a neighborhood.”

Ms. Lin — unwittingly, she says — thrust herself into the center of the debate soon after buying her rowhouse at 146-15 56th Road for $558,000 in 2013. She had started to renovate, but quickly determined that it would make more sense financially to tear the house down and build a bigger place.

It also made logistical and emotional sense: She wanted a home big enough to house not only her two young children but also her father and brother.

Melinda Katz, a Democrat and the Queens borough president, has vowed to press for protections for single-family rowhouses.

“The rowhouses and the communities that form around that are so important to our future,” she said in an interview. “We value the low-density portion of our neighborhoods.”

“Where will our parents live when they come over from China?” asked Lin Xin, an employee with a contracting firm that had been involved in several of the projects in Queensboro Hill. “Why do you think we work so hard? Why do we scrimp and save? This is why. We want to be reunited with our families. We want to sit around the same table together.”

An important message from HDC

Dear Friend in Preservation,

We need your help. The de Blasio administration is made it obvious that the preservation of New York City’s character is not being considering in their plans for the future. As citizens and organizations who are working to preserve and uplift New York, we need to make the Mayor hear our voices and address our concerns. HDC and our colleagues are planning a press conference next Wednesday at 3pm on the steps of City Hall to express our concerns about the Mayor’s citywide rezoning proposal ‘Zoning for Quality and Affordability’ – an anti-neighborhood proposal which would slash neighborhood zoning protections and lift height limits in both contextual and non-contextual zones. The press conference will be at 3pm and the public hearing on the scoping begins at 4pm at a few blocks away at City Planning, 22 Reade Street.

I’m asking for you help with three things.

1. Please lend your name and support to the attached open letter to the Mayor. Let me know if I can add your organization to the list of supporters. I’m also collecting individual supporters (if so, please tell me which neighborhood you should be identified from). This letter will be going out next week to the Mayor and the press.

2. Please come and participate at the rally on Wednesday 3/25 at 3pm on City Hall steps. We need a good showing to voice our concerns.

3. Testify at the City Planning scoping hearing which starts at 4pm. I have cut and pasted below a template for testimony and/or a letter you can send in (they are accepting comments until April 6). Please let me know if you can testify and/or send in a letter.

It’s vital that we get the message out now that neighborhoods across the City are very concerned about the proposal and the impact it would have, esp. in terms of the lifting of height limits and the way in which this proposal is being rushed through. I hope you can join us.

Best,


Simeon Bankoff
Executive Director
Historic Districts Council
sbankoff@hdc.org
____________________________________

rdobrus@planning.nyc.gov

fax 212-720-3495

Robert Dobruskin, AICP, Director
Environmental Assessment and Review Division
New York City Department of City Planning
22 Reade Street
New York, NY 10007

Re: ‘Zoning for Quality and Affordability,’ CEQR No. 15DCP104Y

Dear Director Dobruskin:

I have several very strong concerns regarding the proposed scope of the environmental review for this application, and urge that the scope be expanded.

First, it is imperative that the scope of the review allow for the possibility of the existing height limits for contextual zones and for the Quality Housing program to remain in place. It is one thing to suppose that the City could benefit from having contextual districts with different height limits than those which currently exist, and to examine where such changes might be appropriate; it is another to retroactively change the existing limits everywhere they currently exist, and eliminate the current limits across the board.

It is also imperative that the scope look at the impact which allowing taller development with greater volumes, as proposed, would have on historic resources, neighborhood character, and shadows, especially in and around parks and other light-sensitive resources. While the Landmarks Preservation Commission would continue to regulate the allowable size of new developments and additions in historic districts, important historic resources also exist outside of designated historic districts. Under this plan, the incentive for demolition of such resources would increase, as would the likelihood of vertical extensions being added. Larger and taller construction in neighborhoods, and especially in areas of historic resources, would in many cases have a negative impact which should be measured. Similarly, the larger, taller buildings allowed under this plan would cast larger shadows, impacting parks, playgrounds, and other light-sensitive sites.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Klein Farm finally sold

From the Times Ledger:

Fresh Meadows’ Klein Farm has been sold to tenants who recently accepted responsibility for illegally cutting down trees on the historic property.

Ziming Shen’s Fresh Meadows Children’s Farm LLC bought the farm, at 194-15 73rd Ave., last week for $5.6 million from Audrey Realty Corp., a firm headed by Henry Huang, son of notorious developer Thomas Huang.

Shen was hit with $1,600 in fines by the city after his daycare center, Preschool for America, which leased the farm, altered the driveway and cut down trees without the necessary permits.

The farm sits in the Fresh Meadows Special Planned Community Preservation District, meaning any significant changes to the property have to be approved by the City Planning Commission.

Outraged neighbors and community leaders first noticed the trees being cut down last fall and reported the arborcide to the city Department of Buildings.

The property was the borough’s last family-owned, working farm before the Huangs bought it in 2003 for $4.3 million. They then unsuccessfully tried to develop the farm into 22 two-family homes.

Neither Huang nor Shen returned requests for comment.

Ecclesiastical architecture is threatened citywide

From the NY Post:

Preservationists are raising hell to protect the city’s historic churches as parishes in desirable areas close and developers snatch up the holy properties.

Chelsea neighbors are fighting a proposed 11-story tower above the 150-year-old French Evangelical Church, which has struggled to pay for repairs and sold its air rights to survive. Residents say the plans are “atrocious” and want the Presbytery of New York City to try a Hail Mary.

“It’s not just about the preservation of this block — it’s about all the city’s historic churches,” said Paul Groncki of the 16th Street Block Association.

“They’re an important part of the fabric of our neighborhoods, and we don’t want to see them disappear. This church will disappear if it’s encased in concrete.”

The New York Landmarks Conservancy surveyed 1,200 significant religious sites across the city and found that more than two dozen historically or architecturally important churches have been shuttered or destroyed in the past decade. And Brooklyn parishes are especially in danger, said Ann Friedman, who runs the conservancy’s Sacred Sites program.

“We are going to see a lot of development and loss,” she said. “We can’t just sit back and wring our hands.”

Mets try to be preservationists

From the Forum:

Queens preservationists are partnering with the Mets to save the New York State Pavilion, an iconic structure built for the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows Corona Park that has severely deteriorated over the years.

A portion of each ticket purchased for the Mets’ home game against the Giants on Friday, Aug. 1 at 7:10 p.m. will be donated to the People for the Pavilion, an organization dedicated to preserving and reusing the site.

Hmmm. The Mets have been sharing Flushing Meadows with the Pavilion in that condition for decades. But NOW they want to do something to help? I call B.S. on this. Save FMCP summed it up best:

Mets want to save the Pavilion? Then they should tell the city to keep the subsidies they're getting for the mall. http://t.co/HnKq7KVRze

— Save FlushingMeadows (@SaveFMCP) April 13, 2014

TRUTH.

S.I. elected officials as lame as those in Queens

From DNA Info:

Elected officials and nearly two dozen residents rallied on the steps of City Hall on Wednesday to try and stop the development of the former Jesuit retreat house Mount Manresa, a week after crews began work on the property.

Councilwoman Debi Rose introduced a resolution to push the Savo Brothers, who have said they will build condos on the historic site, to instead preserve the 15-acre land in Rosebank.

"Today, I am pleased to have introduced a resolution calling on the new owners, the Savo Brothers, to protect and preserve in its current form the land known as Mount Manresa. Mount Manresa is Staten Island history.”

A resolution? They mean absolutely nothing, but look nice on paper. Staten Island Crap coming soon.

Klein Farm stripped of trees

Here is what the Klein Farm property in Fresh Meadows looked like last summer. Notice the trees next to both driveways:




The DOB listing for the Klein Farm clearly states that it is in a special planned community preservation district.

In such a district, the following applies:


Here's what the farm looks like now:


DOB was notified when the tree-cutting was happening, but they didn't see a problem.

I guess this falling-down gate is also acceptable.

What a joke. The Huangs strike again!

Schumer attacks preservationists

Dear Neighborhood Partner,

On Monday, New York’s preservation community was attacked in the New York Post as “those people would see the city die a slow death”. This is provocative (although the Post has called us worse) but when the writer is United State Senator Charles Schumer, it demands action.

Senator Schumer is writing about the plan to upzone East Midtown, which is currently under consideration by the City Council and due to be voted on by next week. The plan is opposed by eight community boards, elected officials, labor unions and even the property owners of Grand Central Terminal but that hasn’t stopped our adversaries in the Real Estate Board of New York from beating the drums and calling in favors to get this massive upzoning passed. Along the way, REBNY wants nothing less than each and every preservation activity fully and firmly squashed. This is more than landmarking, this is overall assault on public participation in development in our neighborhoods. These are the people who spent millions of dollars interfering with local elections and send lobbyists out to community meetings to sabotage preservation efforts. The fruits of their efforts can be seen in Sen. Schumer’s indictment of us as “those people”.

Senator Schumer’s insult affects more than just people who care about Midtown. New York is about to see a massive change in city government for the first time in a dozen years and to have our efforts derided by one of the state’s senior politicians as shortsighted and reflexively negative is unconscionable. Preservationists have been fighting for the soul of New York through the most development-friendly administration in history and to be dismissed and insulted by our Senator in front of a new government requires an answer.

Please circulate this petition far and wide to your friends, neighbors and members. Schumer is not just insulting preservation efforts in Midtown Manhattan, he’s attacking everyone who is working to protect their neighborhood.

Sign the petition: http://goo.gl/bGiPKj

To contact Senator Schumer directly: http://www.schumer.senate.gov/Public/contact.htm

Thank you,

Simeon Bankoff
Executive Director
Historic Districts Council
232 East 11th Street
New York, NY 10003

Goodbye, gold coast

From the NY Times:

Inside the mansion it looked as if all parties — and anything else that had taken place in the mansion since the Jazz Age — were most certainly over. Movers had carted away just about everything from the 87-room, Elizabethan-Tudor-style mansion, which was designed by John Torrey Windrim and completed in 1920 for Nicholas F. Brady, an industrialist who was the head of numerous utility companies.

It was named Inisfada — Gaelic for Long Island — and it was one of the grandest of the Gold Coast mansions on Long Island’s North Shore, with 37 fancifully decorated chimneys, stately slate roofs and a facade decorated with scenes from fairy tales. It served as the summer residence for Mr. Brady and his wife, Genevieve, who never had children. After her husband’s death, she donated the home in 1937 to the New York Province of the Society of Jesus, the local branch of the Jesuits, which turned it into a seminary and later the Saint Ignatius Retreat House.

But now, local civic groups fear that the building faces demolition. Inisfada and its 33 overgrown acres were listed for sale last year for $49 million. The Jesuits are on the verge of closing a deal with a developer from Hong Kong who some preservationists fear will knock down the building as part of a plan to create a gated community of luxury homes, said Richard Bentley, president of the Council of Greater Manhasset Civic Associations, which is mounting a grass-roots campaign to save the mansion.

It is unclear what the developer intends to do, since neither the Jesuits nor the buyers have addressed the issue publicly, but Mr. Bentley said he was under the impression that the developer’s plans did not include keeping the structure, because “They could avoid all this opposition and bad press by simply saying they’re preserving it.”

Documenting City's neglect of NYS Pavilion

From DNA Info:

The New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows Corona Park can be seen from highways, from airplanes landing at LaGuardia Airport and from various spots in the park.

Standing under the rusting frame, it’s hard to imagine its past grandeur.

But Matthew Silva, a teacher and filmmaker, is hoping to change that through a film documenting the history of the Queens landmark, as well as the people who have fought to restore it.

It wasn’t until he was studying design at Stony Brook University, walking through his school’s bookstore, that he learned of the important history of the Pavilion. He found a book about American architecture with the tallest tower — “that thing I always saw on the LIE’’— on the cover.

“I couldn’t believe that Philip Johnson designed that project and the city let such a visible and prominent design go to waste,” he said.

Silva's now a teacher at Jericho Middle School and High School, but his interest in World's Fair history has remained a constant since college.

This college discovery led him to pursue the history of the World’s Fair, as well as the decades-long fight to preserve it.

Making new architecture fit in

From City Journal:

One of Dickens’s villains boasts that he’s never moved by a pretty face, for he can see the grinning skull beneath. That’s realism, he says. But it’s a strange kind of realism that can look through life in all its vibrancy to focus only on death.

Much of today’s architecture brings that misanthrope to mind. Beauty? For our advanced culture, it’s as spectral as classical philosophy’s two other highest values: the good and the true. A building might be cutting-edge, boundary-breaking, transgressive. But simply beautiful? The arts have transcended such illusions.

A pity. Part of the pleasure of metropolitan life is the pre–World War II city’s manifold loveliness. When you see the illuminated Chrysler Building glowing through the evening fog, or walk by the magnolias blooming in front of Henry Frick’s museum, ravishing outside and in, or gaze up at the endlessly varied historicism of lower Broadway’s pioneering skyscrapers, you know you are Someplace—someplace where human inventiveness and aspiration have left lasting monuments proclaiming that our life is more than mere biology and has a meaning beyond the brute fact of mortality. Like all our manners and ceremonies, from table etiquette to weddings, beauty in architecture humanizes the facts of life. So we don’t want a machine for living—a high-tech lair to service our animal needs—but rather a cathedral, a capitol, a home, expressive of the grandeur, refinement, urbanity, and coziness of which our life is capable.

Two recent Manhattan buildings gracefully exemplify the life-affirming architectural humanism I have in mind. First is a gemlike house at 5 East 95th Street, just east of Central Park, by celebrated London architect John Simpson, designer of the enchanting Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace. Completed late in 2005, it looks like an independent townhouse but is, in fact, an extension of the landmarked Beaux-Arts mansion at 3 East 95th Street that Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer designed in 1913 for Marion Carhart, a banker’s widow, who died before she could move in. In 1935, the Lycée Français bought the house, and years of high-energy students left the structure battered by the time the school sold it to a Hong Kong–based developer in 2001. Layers of battleship-gray paint covered the first floor of its grimy limestone street wall; the interior, with its institutional bathrooms and fire doors, had grown shabby; and a jerry-built, three-story 1950s annex, resembling an auto-body shop, adjoined it at 5 East 95th.

Special Hillsides Preservation District doesn't do much to protect hillside

From SI Live:

Members of the Tompkins Circle Civic Association were surprised and concerned in late March when they observed workers removing vegetative undergrowth and then cutting down trees on the steep hillside that rises 80 feet up from the intersection of Van Duzer Street and St. Pauls Avenue to Tompkins Circle.

The vacant land is immediately adjacent to the neighborhood's century-old Stairway Street, and falls within the boundaries of the city-designated Special Hillsides Preservation District (SHPD).

This site is one of three tax lots that Pavilion Hill Terrace LLC owns and envisions for a new residential and commercial development called Pavilion Hill Terrace.

The city's zoning resolution that created the SHPD notes that one of the goals of the designation is "to reduce hillside erosion, landslides and excessive storm water runoff associated with development by conserving vegetation and protecting natural terrain."

Other goals are "to preserve hillsides having unique aesthetic value to the public," and "to guide development in areas of outstanding natural beauty in order to protect, maintain and enhance the natural features."

It is on these grounds that homeowners in the Tompkins Circle civic are furious about the removal of trees and vegetation on what they describe as a fragile hillside.

Community Board 1 and local residents informed the Department of City Planning that trees were being removed on the protected hillside site, an agency spokesperson informed the Advance on April 30.

"Removal of trees over six inches in caliper requires a (City Planning Commission) authorization, or demonstration to the Department of Buildings that they are a public safety hazard due to damaged or dying trees," the spokesperson explained.

"The Department of Buildings issued a violation against the property owner. To remove the violation, the property owner will need to submit a restoration plan subject to certification by the City Planning Commission," the spokesperson said.

It's happening because of us

Editorial from the Queens Chronicle:

It’s a shame that “The Triumph of Civic Virtue,” the 1920 statue by famed sculptor Frederick MacMonnies, which has been stationed outside Borough Hall since the 1940s, is being moved out of Queens.

But the fact is we don’t deserve to keep it.

The statue, commonly just called “Civic Virtue,” has not been well maintained. It’s not respected by many residents here; most probably don’t even know what it is. It was controversial even before it arrived at the corner of Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike. And its pending move to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, while unfortunate, may provide the impetus for the residents of this borough to be more protective of our treasures.

“Civic Virtue” comprises a male figure wielding a sword and towering over two writhing female figures, sirens of Greek mythology, meant to symbolize vice and corruption. Those who want to keep it where it is understand the symbolism.

But from day one the sculpture has been misinterpreted, both knowingly and not, as sexist. Elizabeth King Black of the National Women’s Party is one who decried it, saying, “Men have their feet on women's necks, and the sooner women realize it the better!” That was no recent comment made by someone ignorant of history; she said it at a hearing in the 1920s.

So while we sympathize with those who know what the sculpture is meant to convey, we also understand the view of those who look at it and just see misogyny.

That, however, is not the main reason people in Queens should throw up their hands and just let “Civic Virtue” go. The main reason is that we let our officials allow it to all but fall apart over the years, and now it’s too late to do anything about it. Those who wanted it preserved should have demanded that funds be allocated for that years ago.

Instead, in typical Queens fashion, no one got it done. Now that the statue is just days away from being moved to Green-Wood — which will pay to restore it with private funds and let those who want to admire it afterward do so — we get a too-little, too-late press conference, led by two City Council members trying to stop the process.

The hearing was held, the decision was made, and all we can say now is that Queens residents should do a better job protecting other borough assets, such as the New York State Pavilion from the 1964-65 World’s Fair, the Bowne House, the Steinway Mansion and so many other endangered landmarks. If we lose another, the fault again will be not in our stars but in ourselves.

Too little, too late

The above video is from July 19, 2012. There was also a press conference February 25, 2011 calling for the removal of the statue and a subsequent March 11, 2011 NY Times article about Greenwood's interest in it.

If elected officials were really serious about keeping Civic Virtue in Queens, they wouldn't have waited until December 8, 2012 - nearly 2 years after this nonsense started - to have a press conference/rally, after it was announced that it was a done deal that it was being moved to Brooklyn. The fact that the Johnny-come-lately rally was led by Council Members Peter Vallone, Jr. and Liz Crowley is actually quite comical in light of their anti-preservation records.


The deliberate and uneducated actions of certain Queens elected officials (specifically Marshall, Ferreras and Weiner) and the deliberate inaction of all other Queens elected officials is what exiled Civic Virtue to Brooklyn. Ponder the symbolism for a moment.

The way preservation works in Queens is that electeds allow whatever is going to happen get to the point of no return and then they hold meaningless last-minute rallies to try to save face as the ship sinks. Pathetic preservation suckers fall for the charade every time, too.

The more I think about it, the more I believe Civic Virtue belongs in Brooklyn, which still has a few burning embers of civic virtue, and at Greenwood Cemetery where it will be restored and properly cared for. Getting anything fixed or preserved in Queens has unfortunately become a really unfunny joke, with the joke being on us.