Architect’s elevation study of front and rear facades of proposed townhouse. Image credit: LPC

Townhouse to be constructed in a modified Beaux-Arts style where 1880s townhouse was destroyed in an explosion. On July 12, 2016, Landmarks considered and approved an application to construct a new building at 34 East 62nd Street, in Manhattan’s Upper East Side Historic District. The site is currently vacant. It was occupied by an 1880s Neo Grec townhouse until 2006, when it was destroyed in an explosion. A plan to replace the destroyed townhouse with a contemporary residential building designed by Abelow Sherman Architects was approved by Landmarks in 2007, but never realized. The proposal before Landmarks at the July meeting was a completely new plan by a different design team, but is officially an amendment to the 2007 certificate of appropriateness.

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The Martha Washington Hotel and Barbizon Hotel for Women provided housing for single women pursuing careers. In July 2011, Landmarks held public hearings for the potential designation of two residential hotels in Manhattan that served an emerging class of professional women in the early 20th Century. The Martha Washington Hotel is located at 30 East 30th Street, and the Barbizon Hotel for Women is located at 140 East 63rd Street.

Architect Robert W. Gibson designed the Martha Washington Hotel, which was completed in 1903. The hotel was run by the Women’s Hotel Company. It is one of the earliest examples of a residence catering to single professional women. The twelve-story, Renaissance Revival- style structure provided 500 long-term rooms and 150 rooms for transient tenants. The hotel began admitting male tenants in 1998. The Martha Washington Hotel is now the Hotel Thirty-Thirty.  (read more…)

Extension includes 74 properties in two sections contiguous to Upper East Side’s original historic district. On March 23, 2010, Landmarks voted unanimously to designate the Upper East Side Historic District Extension. The extension consists of two distinct sections along Lexington Avenue, with one between East 71st and East 76th Streets, and the other between East 65th and East 63rd Streets.

The area first experienced a period of major development in the 1870s, spurred on by the opening of the Third Avenue and Second Avenue elevated rail lines in 1878 and 1880. Neo-Grec and Italianate-style architecture dominated this period of development. The construction of the Lexington Avenue Subway in 1911 triggered a second wave of development. Many existing rowhouses received exterior and interior alterations, and as apartment living became attractive to wealthy New Yorkers, developers began building large Beaux-Arts, Colonial Revival, and neo-Gothic apartment houses. The area’s development history, as well as the scale and character of properties within the extension, matched that of the Upper East Side Historic District, originally designated in 1981. (read more…)