Far Rockaway firehouse & police station landmarked

From the Times Ledger:

A fire house and a police station both built in Far Rockaway in the early 20th century have officially been approved for landmark status following a unanimous 47-0 vote last week, according to City Councilman Donovan Richards (D-Laurelton).

After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, much of Far Rockaway was in need of redevelopment and surveyors from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission researched the history of buildings in the area.

In 2017, Far Rockaway was rezoned and the 101st Precinct — formerly the 53rd Precinct — and the Engine Companies 264 & 328/Ladder 134 were seen as worthy for designation, according to the councilman’s office and the LPC.

“They carry history and have housed some of our most precious civil servants,” Richards said. “These sites will carry on the character that was set when the modern version of our community was first being shaped.”

The precinct — located at 16-12 Mott Ave. — and the fire station — located at 16-15 Central Ave. — publicly came under consideration as landmarks in March and the LPC held a hearing with members of the community in Manhattan one month later.

Boy, the LPC sure loves to designate Queens' unremarkable municipal buildings...and little else.

Brooklyn developer listens to community, is ok with landmarking

From Brooklyn Daily:

The confidentiality agreement that blocked the mystery buyer of the Angel Guardian Home in Dyker Heights from coming forward to reveal his intentions for the block-sized complex has loosened enough for him to speak exclusively to this paper about his plans for the site, and how the community’s voice helped shape them.

Developer Scott Barone credited this paper’s extensive coverage of local needs and concerns since the property’s purchase last year with informing his decision to include a senior center, affordable housing, senior housing and perhaps a school along with the market-rate condos he had originally planned for the entire site — as well as preserving the main building, which locals have been pushing to landmark to protect it from the wrecking ball.

“We really heard three things from the community at large: that they need schools and senior housing, that the Narrows Senior Center is something that’s important to this community as a whole, and that this building is important to this neighborhood, and we’re going to do everything in our power to keep it there,” said Barone, the founder and president of his eponymous management company, which has previously developed hotels, luxury apartments, and office and commercial buildings across the city.

The developer said that he has already had meetings with the Landmarks Preservation Commission about the century-old main building, but his current plans are to preserve it as part of the final design, though he’s not yet sure what would go there.

“It is our intention at this time to keep that main building in place,” he said, “and if it were to be landmarked, we’re okay with that.”

Barone said he expects to close the Angel Guardian deal within the next two to three months — pending approval from the Vatican — and that 60 percent of the block-sized property bound by 63rd and 64th streets and 12th and 13th avenues will be devoted to market-rate condos, with an additional 15 percent earmarked for affordable housing and the last 25 percent split between senior housing and perhaps a school.

LPC Chair resigns

From the NY Times:

The chairwoman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission announced on Thursday that she was stepping down from her post, after nearly four years of a sometimes tumultuous stewardship.

The chairwoman, Meenakshi Srinivasan, had faced fierce opposition to a set of proposed rule changes that critics said would weaken protections for historic buildings in New York City.

Those changes would, among other things, put the commission staff in charge of some types of landmarks decisions. Critics said that would remove decisions from public view and eliminate the chance for public comment.

At a commission hearing on March 27, an overwhelming majority of speakers voiced opposition to those rules; at least one speaker at the hearing called for the removal of the chairwoman, to loud applause.

Rockaway firehouse and police precinct up for landmarking

From the Times Ledger:

Two buildings in Far Rockaway were up for consideration as preserved landmarks last week in Manhattan.

The first was Firehouse and Engine Companies 264 and 328/Hook and Ladder 134, located at 16-15 Central Ave., according to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The second facility up for designation was the 101st Precinct Police Station — formerly the 53rd Precinct — located at 16-12 Mott Ave., which is five minutes away from the firehouse, according to LPC.

The Renaissance Revival-styled firehouse, affectionately called “The Big House” by locals, was built from 1911 to 1913 by architectural firm Hoppin & Koen.

Prominent architects Frances Hoppin and Terrence Koen designed the three-structure firehouse with limestone at the ground floor, three segmental-arched vehicle bays, red brick cladding on the upper stories, a cast stone entablature and a brick parapet, according to LPC.

The precinct is a combination of the Renaissance and Colonial Revival styles and was designed by the Police Department’s Superintendent of Buildings Thomas O’Brien, said LPC. It was built from 1927 to 1928.

Finally, some good news...

What a difference it makes not having Mary Beth Betts around!

LPC unexpectedly calenders Old St. James Church

Looks like the vote was unanimous. What took you guys so long?

RKO Keith's will be encased in glass and not all that accessible

From Curbed:

Now developer Xinyuan Real Estate will join the ranks of planning sorcery with its proposal for the former RKO Keith’s Theater in Flushing, a long-shuttered building by Thomas Lamb with partial interior landmark status. Xinyuan came in front of the Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday morning to present its proposal to rehabilitate and preserve the 1928-built theater’s landmarked grand foyer and ticket lobby within a new glassy 16-floor building with 269 apartments. To the surprise of some, the proposal was approved on the first go-around.

Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, the firm founded by Pritzker Prize winner I.M. Pei, is the project architect while Ayon Studios have been tapped as the preservation architect.

Architectural drawings on file with Landmarks indicate that Xinyuan plans to use the existing ticket lobby and grand foyer as the entry for the residential building. An additional residential lobby, mail room, and elevator bank will be accessed past the landmarked interiors.

Floorplans included in the presentation also show that the building will have a sophisticated robot parking system, as condo developments these days do. Under the plan, the original theater that could once seat up to 3,000 and was not granted landmark status will be razed.

The interiors, largely neglected for the past 30 years, are worse for wear. Images from inside the building taken at different times after its 1984 landmarking show just how much the structure has fallen towards disrepair, with a partial collapse of the grand foyer’s ceiling and graffiti littered throughout.

As part of the site’s redevelopment, some of the existing plasterwork that depicts an asymmetrical Churrigueresque Spanish townscape will be removed and replaced, with other portions being salvaged and restored off site. Just about everything will require work, be it reconstruction or new paint.

The Municipal Arts Society has weighed in on the restoration, saying it believes “the new construction could be more sympathetic to the historic theater,” but endorsing the rehab nonetheless.

The Historic Districts Council in its written statement expresses concerns about the accessibility of the interior landmark, noting that “public accessibility to an interior landmark is a key characteristic of its designation” and that “people are not permitted into the lobby of a residential building except at the invitation of a resident.”

This proved to be the main point of contention among the LPC’s commissioners as well, at Tuesday’s meeting. While the ticket lobby will be accessible to the public as part of the retail space in the new development, the fate of the grand foyer beyond that has yet to be decided.

LPC rejects Dulcken House

From DNA Info:

Local historians are campaigning to save a house in the neighborhood once home to a well-known musician and composer — but the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) says the building has been too significantly altered to warrant landmark status.

The Greater Astoria Historical Society submitted a Request for Evaluation to the LPC in March for the pale yellow 3-story house at 31-07 31st Ave. near 31st Street, which they say was home to Ferdinand Quentin Dulcken, a pianist, composer and music teacher.

The house was purchased by for nearly $1.4 million in 2015, records show. Its owner, George Hrisikopoulos, filed plans with the Department of Buildings in March to develop the site into a 6-story apartment building with a restaurant on the first floor.

He declined to comment when reached by phone on Friday.

Our Lady of Loreto is in court

From AM-NY:

It has arrived in the form of a showdown between a faith-based group determined to level a 109-year-old church to erect affordable housing and residents who want to preserve their neighborhood’s patrimony while providing a hub for Brownsville culture.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Bernard Graham issued a temporary stop to the demolition of the magnificent, albeit deteriorating, Our Lady of Loreto Roman Catholic church on April 26.

A final decision on the historic architectural gem is expected to be handed down on May 9.

Catholic Charities Progress of Peoples Development Corporation (CCPOP), which leases the site from the Diocese of Brooklyn, wants to demolish the 1908 Italian Renaissance church at Sackman and Pacific streets to erect an unknown number of “energy-efficient units for low-income families” in a city where almost 60,000 people are homeless.

Members of the Brownsville Cultural Coalition and others long to landmark the church, which was closed to parishioners around 2008, and repurpose the shrine built by an all-Italian team of craftsmen into a cultural center for residents woefully short in community spaces for the arts.

Housing is important, said Miriam Robertson, executive director of the Brownsville Cultural Coalition, but Brownsville also needs to honor and preserve an important and elegant monument to its immigrant roots and history.

The pro se lawsuit that resulted in the current stay of demolition charges that multiple defendants failed to abide by a 2010 “letter of resolution” concerning the property. The letter of resolution stipulates “the Church itself shall not be demolished, reconstructed or damaged,” and was signed by the then CCPOP CEO and other parties. The church, said the resolution, “is not on the portion of the site of the modified project” slated for homes.

The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, said a commission spokeswoman, “has carefully reviewed this building several times over the past few years and each time determined not to advance it for further consideration due to a lack of support from critical community stakeholders, including the Council member,” for the district, Rafael Espinal.

Bowne Street Church designated a landmark by LPC

From the Queens Tribune:

The Bowne Street Community Church is en route to being landmarked by the city after a decade-long wait.

The City Council’s Landmarks Committee, led by Councilman Peter Koo (D-Flushing), unanimously voted on Tuesday to approve the church’s designation. That was followed by a vote of approval by the Council’s Land Use Committee on Wednesday. The decision will be finalized with a full City Council vote next week, where the measure is expected to pass.

The designation was first sought by members of the community in 2002 after the church’s building committee proposed demolishing the building to allow the development of a 20-story residential building in exchange for a new church and a $1 million payment, according to Koo’s office. It was initially slated for designation in 2003 by the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), but had been delayed over negotiations and backlogged until this past December, when the LPC voted in favor of designation.

The original 2003 proposal would have designated the entire lot, including a parking lot and annex. That became a point of discussion throughout the church’s designation process as Koo worked with LPC to redraw the designation map to exclude the parking lot and annex, leaving the church with 100,000 square feet of potential development rights and still preserving the original structure of the Bowne Street Church. The current designation applies only to the exterior walls and windows of the church.

LPC turns its back on another Queens historic site

From the Queens Chronicle:

In a blow to Queens preservationists, a Downtown Flushing building with a rich history involving Quakerism will be replaced with an eight-story mixed-use building.

The Orthodox Meeting House and Cornucopia Masonic Temple are attached at the site, which is located at 137-66 Northern Blvd.

English colonists bought the location from Matinecock Indians in the 17th century, when Flushing was a Dutch New Netherlands colony, according to zoning consultant Paul Graziano, who made a report about the building’s viability for landmarking in 1994 under a contract with the Queens Historical Society.

A British guardhouse was at the location by the end of the 1600s to defend against Native American attacks. The building was demolished for firewood in 1776.

After the war ended, the site was bought by Orthodox Quakers for use as a secret meeting place (which they had used the location for since the 1600s), according to the report by Graziano, who is running in the nascent Democratic primary race against Councilman Paul Vallone (D-Bayside). They built a meeting house there in 1827. It immediately bordered the Quaker Meeting House during that era, which also saw a split in the religious group known as the Separation: Factions were divided between the Hicksite and Orthodox sects.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission rejected protecting the site in 2014, finding that “it did not rise to the level of an Individual Landmark” according to spokeswoman Damaris Olivo. She did not immediately return a request for comment when asked why it was not determined to be deserving of the status or who submitted the building for landmark consideration.

“If it was in Manhattan, it would have been designated 40 years ago,” Graziano told the Chronicle.

The owner of the site today, an LLC, will build 12 units in the planned eight-story structure, according to the real estate news website YIMBY. Retail, medical office and residential space is set to go there, and demolition permits were filed last year.

Council Member wants Coney Island Boardwalk landmarked

From the Daily News:

The City Council threw its support behind landmarking the Coney Island Boardwalk on Thursday, passing a resolution urging the city to protect the iconic stretch.

Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn) got unanimous support for his resolution, although the Landmarks Preservation Commission has balked at making the move.

Treyger wants the landmark status in part to stop plans to convert much of the boardwalk from traditional wood planks into concrete and fake wood.

Effort underway to preserve another Childs Restaurant

From DNA Info:

A push is underway to landmark a local building that's thought to have once housed a Childs restaurant — the second Queens building associated with the early dining chain to catch the attention of preservationists this month.

Filmmaker Lisa Hurwitz submitted a request Saturday to the Landmarks Preservation Commission to evaluate 59-37 Queens Blvd. for potential landmarking. The history of the property and its decorative terra cotta facade deserve to be preserved, she says in her petition.

Her request comes alongside another submitted this week by the Greater Astoria Historical Society, which asked LPC to landmark a similar-looking building in Astoria that's also believed to be a former Childs eatery.

Why not Neir's?

From the NY Times:

For most of its history, Neir’s notoriety was largely limited to the working class of Woodhaven. It is a friendly den of chatter, where neighbors are regulars, and camaraderie is enjoyed over cold pints of beer. On the outside, nestled on a quiet corner of a residential neighborhood, the place looks more like an aging two-floor townhouse than a tavern.

Daniel Goderich tends bar during a gathering of supporters for the tavern’s landmark status. Credit Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
But longtime patrons say that Neir’s does not get the recognition it deserves. Now they are campaigning for the tavern to be declared a New York City landmark because, they note, some historians believe that it is, in fact, the city’s oldest bar.

Neir’s, its patrons say, deserves the historical status of McSorley’s Old Ale House, which, its manager argues, is the oldest in operation, having served customers since 1854, and Fraunces Tavern, from 1762, which burned down and was rebuilt several times.

In 1829, when Queens was mostly farmland — and livestock, not the J train, rumbled down what became Jamaica Avenue — the manager of a racetrack called the Union Course opened a nearby tavern, the Blue Pump Room. It offered a drink to bettors before and after the races, years before McSorley’s served its first light or dark ale in Manhattan.

Over time, the Blue Pump Room went by different names — The Old Abbey, The Union Course Tavern, and finally, Neir’s Tavern — and had different owners, including the Neir family, who had immigrated to Woodhaven from Germany, the current owners say. The family bought the bar after the racetrack closed in 1898, and added a one-lane bowling alley, a ballroom and a hotel over the tavern. It was renamed “Neir’s Social Hall,” and a sign with that name is on display by a stage in the back room.

So, on a recent Saturday, a rally was held to try to win landmark designation for Neir’s. Standing in front of a cutout of Mae West, Mr. Gordon urged patrons to fill out postcards he had addressed to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. The commission rejected the bar’s application last year.

When Mr. Gordon applied for the designation last August, he cited Neir’s history and interior decorations, including its artifacts and antiquated ice-coil tap system. The tavern needed protection, he said, even if the commission could not prevent someone from buying it.

But the commission, a spokeswoman said, did not believe the bar rose “to the level of an interior landmark” because it “contains standard commercial finishes,’’ making it difficult, without proper documentation, to prove the tavern’s age.

LPC rejects LIC Elks Lodge

From LIC Post:

The Landmarks Preservation Commission has notified this district’s elected officials that the Elks Lodge on 44th Drive is not worthy of being landmarked.

In a letter to Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan, the LPC wrote that the structure “did not rise to the level of an individual landmark.”

“The agency has determined that this property does not merit designation as an individual landmark due to its comparative lack of historic and architectural significance to other landmarked clubhouses,” according to the letter, dated April 14.

About the landmark backlog

Sorry to be late with this. The LPC decided to designate 3 of the 8 items on the backlog list for Queens:

Bowne Street Community Church
Lydia Ann Bell and William Ahles House
Pepsi Cola Sign

However, the following were removed from their calendar:

Old Calvary Cemetery Gatehouse - Van Bramer
First Reformed Church and Sunday School of College Point - Vallone
Proposed Douglaston Historic District Extension - Vallone
Spanish Towers - Dromm
Fairway Apartments - Dromm

Included are the names of the council members who did not support the designations of the dropped items.

New call for landmarking Cornell Farm

From the Times Ledger:

Several civic organizations have joined state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) in calling on the city Landmarks Preservation Commission to grant historic preservation status to the 200-year-old William Cornell Farmhouse in Little Neck.

Avella and the groups claim they have been submitting applications to the LPC to landmark the site for about a decade, but it has never approved them.

The property was purchased for $2 million in 2014 by the Harvest Church of New York, which has since razed the greenhouse adjacent to the farmhouse that it plans to modify to use as a rectory, and has proposed building a house of worship on the property’s front lawn.

I wonder what happened to this plan to buy it.

LPC rejects Old St. James Parish Hall for not being old enough

"The Landmarks Preservation Commission does not think that a 1735 church remodeled in 1883 and restored (not recreated) in 2004 to its 1883 appearance is worthy of landmarking because it's not old or original enough? This is strange because the building only needs to be 30 years old and several buildings, such as Fraunces Tavern and the Theodore Roosevelt birthplace were torn down completely and rebuilt in a different style, yet designated. This decision seems to fall into the "arbitrary and capricious" category." - Christina Wilkinson, President, Newtown Historical Society

LPC Response re Old St James Parish Hall

Here's what it looked like before the "20th century residing". I'd say the restoration of the siding is pretty accurate.

If this property isn't landmark worthy, than what is?

Groups join forces to stop the insanity

From Brownstoner:

Now, more than 50 neighborhood groups have joined together to fight large-scale development city wide — and the ties between politicians and the real estate industry.

New Yorkers for a Human-Scale City is calling for an end to “the violence that real estate developers have inflicted on our skyline, parks, public areas, and cityscape.” The group has created an online petition that calls for changes to laws, requires regulatory appointees be “free of ties to the real estate industry,” and low-rise development and affordable housing that will protect the historic character of the city.

As for Mayor de Blasio, the group wants a “policy change” from him, said Save the View Now founder Steven Guterman in a letter to members. New Yorkers for a Human-Scale City “calls for an end to the way the real estate lobby has captured our city government and all its regulatory bodies like City Planning and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. As has been often reported in the press, developers are major contributors to the Mayors election campaign and his nonprofit Campaign for One New York,” he said.

You can see the full petition here.

Vallone to block Douglaston historic district extension

From the NY Times:

On Thursday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission will hold a hearing, the first of four, to clear a backlog of 95 items that have been on the agency’s to-do list for up to four decades. Among them is the Douglaston extension, which in addition to 17 homes includes a Tudor-style apartment building, a church and an elementary school, most of which date from the 1850s to the 1910s. A final determination will be made next year on whether to declare these properties landmarks.

While many in the existing Douglaston Historic District, as well as New Yorkers across the city, might view living in a landmark with pride, there are those who consider it onerous. Where some see history and beauty, they see bureaucracy, expense and limitations on what they can do with their properties.

Councilman Paul Vallone, a Democrat whose district includes Douglaston, has already said he will block the expansion of the historic district in light of residents’ opposition. The City Council has final say over land-use matters, and members almost always defer to the local representative. As a result, Ms. Carroll, the commission director, anticipates the agency might not expend resources approving something that will only be defeated.