The temperature was in the 90s the day Simeon Bankoff met with City- Land. Mr. Bankoff, Executive Director of the Historic Districts Council, a prominent city preservationist organization founded in 1971 as part of the Municipal Art Society, and operating independently since 1986, had just returned from a demonstration on the steps of City Hall. While most would have wilted, the charming and voluble Mr. Bankoff animatedly discoursed for over an hour on the Historic Districts Council, the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and the future of preservation in the City.

Raised in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, and a graduate of Stuyvesant High School, Mr. Bankoff has only left the city for the four years that he attended Sarah Lawrence College in Westchester County. After a series of positions with preservation- oriented organizations and as one of HDC’s first paid employees, Mr. Bankoff became its executive director in 2000. (more…)

Affordable housing programs controlled by federal and state law. After multiple hearings on the declining number of affordable housing units, the City Council passed Local Law 79 of 2005 over a mayoral veto. The law gave tenants the right of first refusal to purchase their buildings when the owners sought to remove the properties from certain assisted rental housing programs. The law also allowed tenants who did not purchase their building to stay in their units at existing rent levels after their buildings left the programs. The law covered Mitchell- Lama developments, project-based Section 8 developments, and other developments receiving government subsidies or assistance.

The Real Estate Board of New York sued, arguing that the law was invalid since the City did not have the authority to legislate in an area dominated by state and federal law. (more…)

Early cast-iron structure attributed to pioneer of the technique. At a vote attended by preservation advocate Margot Gayle, Landmarks unanimously designated 63 Nassau Street, an 1844 cast-iron building in lower Manhattan attributed to cast-iron pioneer James Bogardus, who was among the first to use cast iron in building facades.

Renovations to 63 Nassau Street had stripped several details from the building, leaving a question as to Bogardus’s involvement and prompting the current owner’s claim at Landmarks’ public hearing that the building was a “knock off” of Bogardus’s techniques and not his original work. 3 CityLand 171 (Dec. 15, 2006). (more…)

Contentious public hearing held on re-inclusion of private home into Queens historic district. Over a year after a court vacated Landmarks’ decision to include 41-45 240th Street into the Douglaston Hill Historic District, Landmarks held a public hearing on its re-inclusion on March 13, 2007.

Landmarks originally included 41-45 240th Street, a private home owned by Kevin and Diana Mosley, within its December 2004 designation. The Mosleys challenged their home’s inclusion and the designation of the entire district, arguing that the decision was arbitrary and Landmarks ignored evidence suggesting their home dated to the 1920s, not the 1870s as Landmarks claimed. In December 2005, a court upheld the designation of the Douglaston Historic District but removed the Mosleys’ home from the district, ordering Landmarks to hold a new hearing and consider the Mosleys’ evidence. 3 CityLand 15 (Feb. 15, 2006). (more…)

Plans sent back to Community Board, Landmarks and Art Commission. Under Parks’ plan to renovate Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, the off-center fountain would be moved 22 feet to align it with the park’s famous arch at its Fifth Avenue entrance. The new fountain would be raised to grade level, have a 45-foot high water plume, and be 23 percent smaller than its current size. Parks received approvals for renovations from Manhattan’s Community Board 2, Landmarks and the Art Commission.

Four Greenwich Village residents sought an injunction to stop Parks’ renovation, arguing that Parks failed to get needed approvals since it submitted obscure plans, withheld information, and failed to clearly explain its plans at each step. The residents submitted evidence alleging that Landmarks voted on a plan to repair, but not move the fountain; Board 2 later approved a plan to reduce the fountain’s size by only 10 percent; and months later the Art Commission was first to learn of the 45-foot plume of water, which, the residents allege, would eliminate the ability to sit around the fountain to watch performers, a historic use of the fountain since the 1960s. (more…)