By Matt Chaban 12/12/12 1:22pm

Best Laid Plans

17 Photos

420 LEXINGTON AVENUE

No Midtown for Old Men: MAS Wants 17 Buildings Saved in Face of Bloomberg’s Big Rezoning

From the start, one of the biggest concerns over the proposed Midtown East rezoning has been the fate of the area’s historic buildings. Midtown has its fair share of landmarks already, but it is no Upper East Side or Park Slope. No doubt there are precious older buildings worthy of preservation, or at least consideration for landmarks protections, especially when staring down all the development that is likely to come from a huge rezoning like the one the Bloomberg administration has proposed for Midtown East.

To that end, the Municipal Art Society has put forward 17 buildings it believes the city ought to consider protecting before the Midtown East rezoning goes into effect. The administration is rushing toward approving this plan sometime next year, but survey of the area’s historic buildings actually has more time than it might seem to proceed, since it has promised the rezoning will have a sunrise provision preventing it from taking effect until 2017. Still, that does not mean any of these buildings could be saved from being torn down and becoming the next Empire State Building. Read More

By Matt Chaban 9/12/12 10:50am

Making History

Dancing into history. (bilde/Angelfire)

Rainbow Room Gets Its Gold: Landlord Tishman Speyer Blesses Plan to Landmark Sky-High Club

One of the big questions surrounding the landmarking of the Rainbow Room was whether or not it would win the support of Tishman Speyer, the august real estate firm that owns Rockefeller Center, home to the famed dance hall and eatery. But the space is lucky as a leprechaun, as the Rainbow Room’s landlord came out in support of landmarking yesterday, according to Crain’s. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/15/12 11:03am

Making History

8 Photos

Engine Co. 73, Hook & Ladder Co. 42

Civic Pride: Landmarks Considers Five Historic Firehouses, Push to Preserve Municipal Architecture

Usually firemen are rushing into other peoples’ homes to rescue them. Yesterday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission was the savior, going into five different turn-of-the-century firehouses to consider them for preservation.

In addition to tabling the Rainbow Room and designating a Queens cemetery as the city’s newest landmark, the commission also calendared five historic firehouses, two each from the Bronx and Brooklyn and one from Queens. This follows the designation in June of three old firehouses in the Bronx and Queens [PDF]. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/14/12 4:52pm

Making History

Ginger Rogers and Howard Hughes, two years after the Rainbow Room opened. (Getty)

Chasing the Rainbow Room: Landmarks Commission Considers Iconic Eatery

The Rainbow Room, like Tavern on the Green or Chumley’s, was one of those New York institutions no one ever visited, until it was gone, at which point the lamentations became unceasing. The fate of the restaurant atop Rockafeller Center remains a mystery, since it was abruptly closed by the Ciprianis three years ago amidst a rent dispute with another of New York’s august families, the Speyers, who control Rock Center.

Whoever takes over the famous (and famously garish) catering hall in the sky, one thing that is unlikely to change is the decor. Today, the Landmarks Preservation Commission decided to consider the two-story space on the 65th floor of 30 Rock for designation as an interior landmark, one 114 in the city. (Others include the Four Seasons, the New York Public Library and, just downstairs, Radio City Music Hall.) Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/13/12 3:24pm

Checking in

Bossert Goes Boutique

Inside the New-Old Bossert Hotel, Former Home to Dodgers and Jehovahs Witnesses

For the past few months, work has been progressing on the Hotel Bossert, once known as Brooklyn’s Waldorf-Astoria. It was where many Dodgers greats used to live, and they famously took the trolley from Brooklyn Heights to Ebbets Field, when that sort of thing was still possible.

For decades, the Bossert has served as a hostel for Jehovah’s Witnesses stopping off at the global headquarters here, but as they are moving upstate and getting rid of all their property, developer David Bistricer stepped forward in May to turn the Bossert back into a boutique that still bears the same name it has for nearly a century. Read More

By Kim Velsey 6/14/12 7:00pm

Historic Hysteria

The tenement museum: it costs a lot of money to keep this place falling down

Winners, Winners Everywhere: Historic Preservation Program Has Cash To Spare

Well, they may not be the most popular historic sites in the city—after all, not everyone can be the Brooklyn Public Library, Congregation Beth Elohim, the New York Botanical Garden, or the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum—but 16 other historic sites will still get some c-notes through the Partners in Preservation program.

Last month, the program doled out $905,000 to the four historic sites that best caught the public’s imagination, winning the most popular votes in a battle that spanned five boroughs and 40 sites.

Today, another $2.1 million in grants was awarded for 16 preservation projects selected by an advisory committee and preservation leaders. Read More

By Kim Velsey 5/17/12 2:21pm

Picture 5

The Unlikely Protesters of Park Avenue: Neighbors Wave Sheets at Planned Toll Brothers Tower

The residents of Carnegie Hill are not particularly experienced in protest techniques—they are more likely to walk through throngs of the demonstrators than to walk among them. But a new Toll Brothers development on Park Avenue has inspired angry Upper East Siders to take up the picket.

In a vertical city like New York, simple signs on sticks do not do much good, so neighbors have resorted to a more high-flying technique for their “visual protest” this morning, unfurling homemade banners from one of their buildings that read “Save Our History.”

“We’re all rookies at this, not professional protesters,” said Lucinda Ballard, who lives in 1112 Park Avenue, right next to the two pre-Civil War townhouses that the Philadelphia-based Toll Brothers is almost certainly planning to replace with a tower, but has thus far refused to confirm. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/05/12 11:41am

Making History

Classy! (Harlem Bespoke)

‘Ghetto’ Wine Shop Bows to Humbler Harlem

Last month, The Observer wondered aloud if there was some value to the preservation of New York’s ghetto character. If we are saving brownstones, cast-iron lofts and now modernist skyscrapers, why not the urban grit that overtook the city in the 1970s and 1980s. Most preservation is a form of urban theme park, so a little graffiti and some chintzy signs seems appropriate to convey the full sense of New York over the centuries.

This thought experiment was prompted by a liquor store sign that offended the sensibility of its neighbors in Harlem, who sought to transform the section of the hood into a certain Brooklyn enclave. “We want to be Park Slope with charming little stores and become a destination for people,” Ruthann Richert told The Times at the time.

Well, the gentrifiers have won out, the paper reports. Read More