Corner view of proposed 21 Greenwich Rendering Image Credit: Landmarks

Commission would like to see more masonry to help building remain in context. On October 8, 2019, the Landmarks Preservation Commission heard an application for a Certificate of Appropriateness to demolish a one-story extension and construct a new five-story residential building with a rooftop addition, on a corner three-story mixed-use building. The application also seeks to restore the three-story corner building. The proposed building and addition is located at 21 Greenwich Avenue within the Greenwich Village Historic District in Manhattan.

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Image Credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office

The project will include the expansion of the Lower Manhattan shoreline and four capital projects devoted to the resiliency of Lower Manhattan neighborhoods. On March 14, 2019, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency (LMCR) Project. The project is one of the City’s responses to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Hurricane Sandy was a turning point for the City to tackle infrastructure resiliency. Hurricane Sandy resulted in $19 billion of devastation for the City and particularly impacted Lower Manhattan. The storm resulted in power outages and flooding in homes, businesses, and tunnels. Since Hurricane Sandy, the City has worked to assess Lower Manhattan’s climate change impacts and risks and analyze coastal protection options for the area’s 3.3-mile shoreline. (more…)

Central Harlem West 130-132nd Historic District. Image credit: LPC.

164-building potential district characterized by 19th-century residential architecture, and cultural and political history.            Landmarks held a public hearing on the potential designation of the Central Harlem West 130-132nd Historic District at its meeting on April 17, 2018. The district is composed of the block interiors on 130th, 131st, and 132nd Streets between Lenox Avenue and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. The district includes approximately 164 buildings, chiefly built during a brief period of development in the final decades of the 19th century. The speculative rowhouses were constructed in architectural styles appealing to the middle class of the period, primarily Neo Grec, interspersed Queen Anne, Renaissance Revival, and Romanesque Revival. Landmarks Executive Director Sarah Carroll stated that the proposed designation had come about through Landmarks’ study of properties associated with African-American history and the civil rights movement. (more…)

Landmarks Preservation Commission. Credit: LPC.

The proposed designation of the former Yuengling Brewery Site in East Harlem proved contentious, dividing preservationists and those who wished to see site developed.  On November 12, 2015 the Landmarks Preservation Commission held the final of four special hearings organized to address the backlog of items added to the Commission’s calendar before 2001, but never brought to a vote on designation.  The final hearing consisted of items in Manhattan, occupying Community Boards six through twelve.  Landmarks is expected to make determinations on the items in early 2016.

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Map of proposed Park Ave. Historic District. Image credit: LPC.

Representatives and members of the Park Avenue Christian Church petitioned Landmarks to ensure that designation would not impede planned development. On February 11, 2014, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a hearing on the potential designation of the Park Avenue Historic District, comprising 68 buildings in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.  The area is characterized by a predominance of early-20th century high-rise apartment buildings, as well as some low rise dwellings, individual mansions, institutional buildings, and later-period apartment buildings. The area was developed primarily for upscale housing, modeled after Fifth Avenue. If designated, the district would adjoin the Upper East Side Historic to the south, and share borders with the Carnegie Hill and Expanded Carnegie Hill Historic Districts.  According to the Landmarks’ Research Department, the buildings in the district “retain a high degree of architectural integrity.”

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