Grassroots campaign takes to the streets to build community support to preserve rowhouses from out-of-character development. On Saturday, June 1, 2013, the Sunset Park Landmarks Committee (SPLC) sponsored its third walking tour of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The tour, which begins on 43rd Street and 4th Avenue and concludes on 8th Avenue and 60th Street, is one of the committee’s ways to gain support for the creation of a historic district in Sunset Park by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Sunset Park is mainly composed of modest three-story, two-family structures, originally built for working class families during the 1890s to the 1910s. These rowhouses include neo-Grec, Romanesque Revival, and Renaissance Revival styles, and the structures are a combination of brick, brownstone, and limestone.

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Advocacy group selects areas in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island as meriting preservation attention in 2013. The Historic Districts Council announced its “Six to Celebrate” list of preservation priorities on January 3, 2013. The areas identified by HDC consist of the Bronx Parks System, Manhattan’s East Village/Lower East Side and Tribeca neighborhoods, Brooklyn’s Greenpoint and Sunset Park neighborhoods, and Harrison Street in Staten Island.

The six areas were chosen from applications submitted by neighborhood groups around the city. The selected preservation targets will be commemorated at an event held by HDC on January 29, 2013. (more…)