By Matt Chaban 10/31/12 8:36am

Frankenstorm

Not in session. (MAS)

Landmarks Commission Cancels Weekly Meeting, Planning Commission Hopes to Be Running Tomorrow

Update 10/31:The City Planning Commission announced last night that today’s meeting has been cancelled.

The mayor may be sending city employees to work today, as he did yesterday. “We are here to serve the public,” the mayor said. Those workers will be helping with recovery efforts in any way they can—planners planning escape routes, perhaps, or preservationists thinking of ways to protect buildings—but there will be no business as usual.

As a result, there is no plan to hold the near-weekly Landmarks Preservation Commission meeting today, as though anyone could get to the Municipal Building in flooded Lower Manhattan with all the bridges closed and subways flooded. Still, if you are a die-hard NIMBY and were thinking about going, don’t bother. The City Planning Commission canceled its Monday meeting but hopes to combine it with its regularly scheduled Wednesday meeting tomorrow. Read More

By Kim Velsey 10/18/12 7:45pm

Making History

The old Gage & Tollner (NYT)

Gage & Tollner Building Now Houses a Garish Purveyor of Costume Jewelry

Landmarking might preserve a piece of history, but unfortunately it cannot stop time. And at Gage & Tollner, one of the few places in the city that is landmarked both inside and out, The Wall Street Journal has discovered a good example of a place that has kept its shell but lost its soul.

The esteemed old Southern restaurant, after having died, been revived and then remade into an Italian restaurant, a TGI Fridays and an Arby’s is now a costume jewelry shop with bare bulbs and sparkling cheap things hung on pink panels that cover the spot’s famed cherrywood and mirrors. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/16/12 11:33am

Making History

Let's celebrate. (GEI NY)

Rainbow Room Granted Landmarks Status, Paving Way for Restaurant’s Reopening

Despite concerns the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission might not grant the Rainbow Room landmarks status, having denied a request to do so only a few years ago, the commission did exactly that this morning, voting unanimously to add the historic eatery to the city’s list of interior landmarks, making it the 115th. Now Tishman Speyer and the as-yet unnamed restaurateur it has selected to reopen the restaurant atop Rockefeller Center can get on with the task—though any changes to the space would not have to pass muster with the commission. Read More

By Kim Velsey 10/09/12 10:04am

And then there were condos

5 Photos

186 Spring Street

Does New York City Need a Gay Rights Landmark?

For a brief moment in the late summer, it seemed possible, if not probable, that the red brick row house at 186 Spring Street might become the first gay rights landmark in the city to be officially recognized by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Soho rowhouse sheltered a number of prominent gay rights activists, among them Bruce Voeller (who was a leader in the fight against AIDS), Arnie Kantrowitz and Jim Owles, who was the president of the Gay Activists Alliance at the time he lived there, an influential organization that emerged in the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots. Until the spring, it belonged to another notable New Yorker, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz.

But on a rainy morning last week, the building was surrounded by neither city officials nor map-clutching tourists, but by a demolition crew tasked with tearing it down to make way for a seven-story luxury condo. 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 Alexandra Dean Hitzler 7/18/12 3:41pm

Making History

Big government meets big business.

Market Ready: Landmarks Commission Approves Brooklyn Municipal Building Shops, Insisting It’s Pro-Business

The Landmarks Preservation Commission has been on the defensive of late, fighting off claims from the real estate industry that it hinders development rather than helping it. But in givings its unanimous approval to the transformation of the Brooklyn Municipal Building—in the newly created, much maligned Downtown Brooklyn Skyscraper Historic District—the commission reasserted its role as a steward of both the city’s history and economy.

“It proves again and I don’t know how many times we have to do it, that economic development and preservation go hand in hand and here’s a textbook example of it,” Commissioner Chairman Robert Tierney said in an email. Read More

By Matt Chaban 6/14/12 8:02pm

Making History

The landmark in question. (Daytonian in Manhattan)

Preservationists Issue Rallying Cry, Prepare to Save Landmarks Law from Big Real Estate

Though the Responsible Landmarks Coalition has yet to take any public action beyond launching its web presence, preservationists are lining up to fight back. The Historic Districts Council just announced a town hall meeting “to defend the Landmark Law” next week. It will be held next Tuesday evening at the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen—a landmark on West 44th Street designated in 1988, no less.

This follows on a strongly worded fusillade last week from HDC director Simeon Bankoff, the preservationists’ own cri de coeur. Read More

By Matt Chaban 6/08/12 10:14am

Making History

No place for Lefferts Place. (Brooklyn to the Fullest)

Who Says the Landmarks Preservation Commission Is Out of Control? Not Clinton Hill

As The Observer reported on Wednesday, a coalition of development and labor groups have launched the Responsible Landmarks Coalition to challenge what they see as mission creep on the part of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission and the preservationists that surround it. The argument is that the preservationists are overwhelming the city with their protections and stiffing development, and thus the city’s economy. (F.I.R.E., baby, F.I.R.E.!)

But in Clinton Hill, they are feeling none of the love, as the commission has rejected a community-led effort to have Lefferts Place, just south of Atlantic Avenue, considered for historic district designation, according to The Times-affiliated Local Fort Greene/Clinton Hill blog. Read More