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Buildings
NYC Preservation Groups Issue Report Criticizing Landmarks
Commission
(archrecord.construction.com - 12/06/04)
By Alex
Ulam
It is no accident that New York City
has some of the best-preserved architecture in the United
States. The modern preservation movement began there nearly
40 years ago. Currently, New York City has some of the county’s
oldest and most stringent landmark laws. But now, a coalition
of some of the city’s leading preservation organizations
has released a report entitled, “Problems Experienced
By Community Groups Working with the Landmarks Preservation
Commission,” The report, which was presented at a city
council hearing in late November, charges that the city’s
architectural heritage is threatened because of changes in
the municipal government’s approach to preservation.
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The New York City Landmarks Preservation
Commission (LPC) is responsible for identifying, designating,
and regulating buildings, historic districts, and interiors
considered important for their historic, cultural, or architectural
character. Currently, the LPC oversees approximately 23,000
buildings, or about 2.3 percent of the city’s structures.
According to the report, however, the LPC is not adequately
protecting the properties that it oversees and it is also
failing to identify historically important buildings facing
demolition or major alterations.
The preservationists charge that the
LPC makes major decisions in an arbitrary manner without adequate
public review. They are also unhappy about changes in procedure
at the LPC whereby many of its reviews, which used to include
public hearings, are now primarily handled at a staff level.
“Over the last 10 or 15 years the process at the agency
has become less transparent and more bureaucratic--that is
where a lot of the frustration came from,” says Simeon
Bankoff, Director of the Historic Districts Council, one the
preservation organizations behind the report. Says Bankoff,
“Both with the designation and the regulation, the public
has been cut out of both the processes.”
Robert Tierny, Chairman of the LPC,
rejects the criticisms contained report. “The idea that
somehow this is some secret operation strikes me as bizarre,”
he says adding that the commission holds 8,000 to 9,000 public
hearings a year and that adding more hearings would not be
practical. While community input in important to the commission,
it ultimately depends upon a staff of trained preservationists
professionals to make decisions says Tierny adding, “Public
interest is a factor, but it is not a determinant--it is not
a popularity contest to see what gets designated a landmark.”
But Anthony Tung, author of Preserving
the World’s Great Cities and a former Chairman of the
LPC from 1978 to 1988, says that the Commission has significantly
loosened its preservation standards. “There is a very
marked loss of historic architectural detail across the whole
cityscape,” says Tung and it has been going on for the
past decade--sometimes it’s the loss of major features,
sometimes it’s small things like the windows in a historic
district.” Says Tung, who testified at the City Council
hearing on behalf of the coalition of preservation groups,
“This report is about the way that the change in quality
of decision making has reduced the quality of preservation.”
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