The end of the beginning. (NYC-Architecture.com)

By now it is received wisdom that the city’s preservation movement got its start the day Penn Station was torn down, and it has been galvanized ever since “to put a stop to the wanton destruction of our greatest buildings” by “would-be vandals” of the real estate trade, as a protest ad published 50 years ago tomorrow once loudly declared in The Times.

Both sides are still at it, but The Times’ Building Blocks columnist David Dunlap provides a tantalizing window on how it all began, including a glimpse at the above ad an a protest that followed on Seventh Avenue, a doomed fight that shocked generations into action.

On that 86-degree summer evening 50 years ago, commuters were greeted by the sight of more than 100 buttoned-down and white-gloved protesters marching around the colossal colonnade at the station’s entrance.

“Save Penn Station,” their signs said, in nicely formed letters. (Architects. Of course.) “Don’t Sell Our City Short.” “Save Our Heritage.” “Action Not Apathy.”

Philip Johnson was impeccably present, in the company of the peerless Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson, a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, who would soon be its president. There was Aline B. Saarinen, the widow of Eero Saarinen, who had been until 1959 an associate art critic at The New York Times. Agbany counted Eleanor Roosevelt, Stewart Alsop, Jane Jacobs and Norman Mailer among its supporters, along with many of the most respected names in architecture and architectural criticism.

[…]

[Architect Peter] Samton, who was 27, recalled being deputized to get Mr. Johnson down to Penn Station that day. “He said, ‘I have a meeting with Mrs. Parkinson; I can’t come.’ We said, ‘Well, bring her along and you can have your meeting while you parade.’”

“The fact that he came meant that we got publicity,” Mr. Samton said the other day, after spreading out Agbany memorabilia in the comfortably modernist living and working space he created on the parlor floor of an Upper West Side brownstone.

Yet the most remarkable and unfortunate fact may be the group’s inability to stop the project. On the one hand, how could they? This was a bunch of architects, planners and concerned citizens taking on not only City Hall and Robert Moses but an emerging Big Real Estate and Progress Itself. That preservationists have been able to achieve so much since, to the consternation of many, is an impressive feat.

Yet one need look at the inability of Sarah Jessica Parker to save either St. Vincent’s Hospital or her husband Matthew Broderick’s opposition to NYU to see that these victories remain few and far between.

Greatest of all may be the fact that we continue to fight the good fight at all.

The landmark in question. (Daytonian in Manhattan)

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.

As widely reported, the Real Estate Board of New York recently joined forces with a handful of construction and development industry groups to create a new coalition that is calling for a halt to landmark designation and an evisceration of the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s abilities to protect and regulate New York City’s historic architecture. The group claims that landmark designation lowers values, raises costs, stifles development and diminishes affordability. To hear them tell it, landmark designation will transform New York into an lifeless museum city with a “look but don’t touch” mentality. HDC feels that nothing could be further from the truth and that their proposed reforms, if adopted, will be very damaging to the long-term health of our city.

Preservation practices empower communities, celebrate our history, drive economic growth and sustain development efforts. Preservation enhances our streetscapes, nurtures tourism, encourages investment and employs local labor. It is a popular, populist movement driven by regular New Yorkers who value their homes and their city. The Historic Districts Council works with community groups throughout the five boroughs on efforts to save, preserve and enhance the special character of New York’s historic neighborhoods. We work with communities from areas as different as the Upper West Side and Bedford-Stuyvesant on the shared goal of empowering the community to have a voice in determining their own future. These two communities are ones whose efforts we honored this week at the Grassroots Preservation Awards and whose successes have been targeted as “over-reaching” by the new real-estate coalition.

It is a great credit to the Mayor and to many community representatives that they recognize New Yorkers’ desire to preserve the special qualities of their homes and neighborhoods. These elected leaders work with their constituents to do exactly that, realizing that a neighborhood where the residents have a say in determining its future is like a well-tended garden, it nurtures and sustains life. The reforms this new coalition proposes would raze our old-growth neighborhoods in search of short-sighted profit.

And so the first shots have been fired.

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

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.

The commission rejected the proposed historic district because it did not have sufficient, contiguous historic character to warrant protection.

“After a careful analysis that included several site visits and independent research, the Commission’s staff determined that the proposed area does not meet the criteria for a historic district, and will not be recommended to the full Commission for historic district status,” the spokeswoman, Lisi de Bourbon, told The Local.

Architecturally, the proposed district includes many row houses from the mid-19th century, as well as several earlier villas, early-20th–century apartment buildings and churches.

But it also features several architectural adjustments made over the years, which disqualified the plan earlier this week.

The entire reason the locals wanted the strip protected was to prevent further "adjustments," including the recent destruction of one of the area's oldest houses by a developer.

It is perhaps the perfect example of why the builders want the LPC to be reigned in and neighbors want more, more, more. Were the street landmarked, there is a good chance the developer could have been forbidden from destroying this almost two-century-old house. On the other hand, the commission is open to new development as well, but they would have made sure the developer built something that fit in with its neighbors. Now, anything can be built here.

Is that O.K.? It depends on ones Randian leanings (what would Howard Roark do?). As Peg Breen, president of the Landmarks Conservancy told us the other day, one of the joys of New York is its dynamic architectural layers. In away, this is pushing it forward. The house, while old, was not beautiful. This is partly a problem of neglect, and perhaps it could have been rebuilt lavishly and beautifully. But instead it will be replaced, hopefully with something worthy of the street.

Unfortunately, rarely is that the level of design in Brooklyn these days, and that is no doubt what has the neighbors worried. If they had faith in the developers of the land, then there would be no need for a Landmarks Preservation Commission. But those fighting for this district were doing it for good reason. If history is a good guide, they are bound to be disappointed by whatever replaces this place.

Well, is it? (Responsible Landmarks Coalition)

An assault on the city's Landmarks Law has quietly been taking place in the corridors of power, through press releases and legislation, for going on a year now. But groups allied against landmarking are planning to fire their first public volley tomorrow, The Observer has learned, with the announcement of a coalition of development and labor groups known as the Responsible Landmarks Coalition.

Formed by the Real Estate Board of New York, it is made up of a number of influential real estate and labor organizations, "and it is only going to get bigger," one person involved in the effort said. "We are going to have some very major institutions looking at these landmarks."

The main issues of concern for the coalition are the increasing prevalence of historic districts, a lack of transparency in the landmarking process, and insufficient public input. The coalition will argue that the growing number of landmark buildings and historic districts are hampering the city's economy and stymieing  development.

"We're concerned that if you apply the concept of landmarks preservation too much, you resrtrict housing and impinge on other aspects of city life," said Richard Anderson, president of the New York City Building Congress, a trade group for architects, engineers and contractors.

In addition to the Building Congress and the Real Estate Board, the coalition also include the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce; three residential landlord groups: the Rent Stabilization Association, the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums, the Community Housing Improvement Program; the building workers union 32BJ; and two groups representing construction unions, the Building Trades Employers Association and the Building and Construction Trades Council.

In addition to drafting a three page signatory letter that is part policy document, part manifesto, the group has launched a new site, responsible-landmarks-coalition.org, as well as Facebook and Twitter accounts to drive their message. The Facebook page already has three "likes."

Clearly illustrating the group's point is a slideshow on the site of eight projects, in four pairs, with the words "The Landmarks Law is BROKEN when these are both landmarks." On the right are rows of townhouses, the Chrsysler Building, the Dakota, on the left an auto body shop and a faceless industrial building.

The group insists it supports the idea of landmarking buildings.

“New York City is known for its great landmarks, which help define our city and drive our economy,” REBNY president Steven Spinola said in a statement, but he charges that "overzealous landmarking" of gas stations and the like makes development in the city prohibitively costly.

This underscores a particular concern with historic districts, one of two designations the Landmarks Preservation Commission can award. By naming an individual landmark, the commission says this specific building has merit. But in creating a far-reaching historic district, like those in Soho or Brooklyn Heights, elevates unspectacular buildings beyond their worth.

This is a somewhat disingenuous argument, since that gas station can indeed be developed, but whatever is planned there must be approved by the commission. This adds to the cost and the time spent developing the project, but it also ensures continuity with the surrounding neighborhood—Soho will still look like Soho, the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, and not the two mixed up together.

Elisabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, declined to comment on a pending announcement.

It was two recent districts, on West End Avenue on the Upper West Side and the Downtown Brooklyn Skyscraper District that have particularly inflamed the groups, who argue that the opportunities to build new and maintain old buildings in these neighborhoods, as well as other districts, have been greatly hampered. There is also the question finding out from the commission where in the landmarking process a building is. The group wants guidelines for buildings enumerated when a building is landmarked, giving the owners more certainty about what can be built in the future.

Supporters of the commission argue that the complaints about preservation are overblown. Peg Breen is president of the Landmarks Conservancy, a group that provides funding for renovation work on landmarks, and she said that her group did an informal survey of many of the group's loan recipients, many of whom said they did not feel owning a landmark had increased their costs. "If you have to fix a roof, you have to fix a roof," she said.

Furthermore, Ms. Breen pointed to numerous studies that find preservation increases or maintains property values (partly because of supply and demand issues) as an argument for its value. "Preservation is jobs, too," she said. And with only 4 percent of the city protected by the Landmarks law, "that leaves plenty of room for everybody else."

Nevermind the fact that landmarking does not prohibit development, but simply regulates it. "That is the problem, though," Mr. Anderson said. "New York is the most expensive city in the country to build in, and regulation is a big part of that, of which landmarks is a big part." With more than 12 percent of Manhattan under preservation protection, as well as large swathes of Brownstone Brooklyn, it can be harder to build whatever you want.

New Yorkers have to decide whether or not that is a bad thing.

Better act fast: brownstones in Brooklyn are being snatched up like hot cakes.

Christabel Gough, the secretary for the Society for the Architecture of the City and a resident of the Greenwich Village Historic District, has a simple, to the point message for New Yorkers: Beware. Manhattanization, she warns, is growing, encroaching on historical neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. It is the real estate equivalent of kudzu and Brooklyn, Ms. Gough says, is the next victim. Yet unlike it’s leafy cousin, Manhattanization cannot be eradicated with sheep.

But first, a word on Manhattanization, as explained by Ms. Gough in her keynote speech, “Can Cobble Hill Avoid Manhattanization” at the Cobble Hill Association General Meeting on May 29th, and helpfully reprinted at Brownstoner.

“How do you Manhattanize an old town house? First, you pay a seven or eight figure price to buy it. Then you destroy it—except, of course, for the street front, if it is in an historic district. You gut it. Your toss any Federal or Greek Revival woodwork into the convenient garbage scow outside the front door. You cut in new windows. You tear out the lower back wall. You change the floor levels. You remove some floors altogether to create double height rooms. That, your architect triumphantly explains, reduces your Floor Area Ratio! You expand the back with a rear yard addition; you expand the top with a rooftop addition; you expand underneath with new underground levels, which may include a swimming pool, a dog-grooming-room and other such essentials. If the swimming pool is of Olympic dimensions, you may ask to excavate the entire rear yard as well, turning the existing garden into a roof terrace. Your landscape architect and his arborist will testify that this will have no impact on the neighbors, because the roof of an Olympic-style swimming pool can be incredibly verdant and beautiful, when planted with trees with shallow root systems, such as crab apples! Or bamboo, perhaps. And your engineer will explain that of course there is no danger; excavation will be painstakingly monitored and the shoring will be state of the art!”

Ms. Gough is not the only Manhattanite concerned about this growing penchant for historical facelifts. “Many buyers re-entering the real estate market after years on the sidelines are discovering what they’re after in brownstone Brooklyn,” The New York Times’ Marc Santora recently wrote. The article, entitled “Brooklyn’s Gold Rush,” lists Brooklyn’s Fort Greene, Park Slope, Boerum Hill, and Red Hook as the most endangered neighborhoods. 

“Brownstones signify stability,” Jill Seligson Braver, an associate broker at Brown Harris Stevens, told the Times. “Putting roots down in a neighborhood for the long haul.”

But they also signify space.

“The current frenzy in the brownstone market is more a reflection of the continuing demand for large spaces,” Mr. Santora writes, and developers are increasingly snatching up two- and three-family homes and converting them into larger single-family residences.

As a result, the median sales prices of Brooklyn homes, once a much-welcome alternative to their pricier counterparts across the East River, have increased considerably. In Park Slope, median sales prices have jumped from $1.2 million to $1.45 million in the last year (a roughly 20 percent increase); in Boerum Hill, they’re up from $1.1 million to $1.7 million (a 60 percent increase); and in Red Hook, from $475,000 to $825,000 (a 73 percent increase).

Not since On the Waterfront has Red Hook been so popular.

jschiewe@observer.com

As The Observer and others have been lamenting for some time now, the day has passed for Jet Age JFK. Terminal 3 is being demolished to make way for more airplane parking to accommodate Delta's expansion of Terminal 4. And now we learn that the same fate has befallen the Sundrome, which was unceremoniously destroyed last year, with no immediate plans for replacement. This leaves only the still-shuttered Terminal 5 as the last remnant of midcentury JFK.

And yet while a piece of architectural history may be gone, it could mean smoother flying for those in and out of JFK, which is really what the airport is all about.

Yesterday, the Port Authority approved JetBlue's plans for what it is calling T5i, an expansion of its three-year-old Terminal 5 to accommodate the carrier's growing international flights (plus a Steve Jobs riff). The project will cost $200 million, create $325 million in economic activity, and add six new gates, freeing up space at Terminal 4 where JetBlue currently operates its international flights from.

“By 2030, more than 160 million people will fly through our airports annually,” Port Authority deputy executive director Bill Baroni said at yesterday's board meeting, when the expansion was approved. “They deserve the best customer experience in the best terminals."

And that is the challenge of airport preservation. Those six new gates will not occupy the space that was vacated by I.M. Pei's Terminal 6. Instead, five new hard stands will be built, the aviation term for parking spots. This is the same fate that befell Terminal 3—it became seven parking spots.

This may seem like an ignominious fate for some remarkable, groundbreaking buildings. Terminal 6 contained the first free-standing glass wall even built, which is to say not supported by a steel structure, just the glass. It was an architectural marvel, forever lost, and now we learn not even to be replaced by another building.

But this is an airport. It is hard enough turning an old factory into a museum, or converting an office tower into apartments, harder still to make that 80-year-old office building feel brand new. At our airports, functional reuse is almost impossible. The planes are too big, as is the security apparatus, and even the functioning of the industry.

Part of the reason JFK needs all that terminal-side parking is because the lean, mean airlines struggling to survive today fly so many more flights, turn so many more planes, than they used to. No more sitting at the gate, or in a hanger—the babies have to move, move, move. And for that, they need room.

"There's a need for parking, certainly," Port Authority spokesman Ron Marisco said.

And so, JFK now has six terminals instead of eight, and never, almost certainly never, will again.

Councilmen Comrie and Lander, the two to beat on Landmarks. (Landmarks! West)

Is there a war on against the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission? That is what preservationists fear, and there is some concern this is not simply about development issues, but also electoral politics.

According to DNAinfo, Councilman LeRoy Comrie could stand to win funds for his ailing campaign coffers if pro-development, anti-preservation proposals move forward.

“Clearly, several of these bills were directly influenced by developers and the powerful real estate lobby that are looking to destroy the ability of the Landmarks Preservation Commission to do its job: to protect the architecture and heritage of the City of New York,” [Queens State Senator Tony] Avella said.

Comrie is widely believed to be mounting a run for Queens Borough President, but had raised just $9,000 as of the latest filing period. That's significantly less than rival Peter Vallone Jr., who had raised more than $1 million, including large contributions from members of the real estate industry.

Comrie's office denies these allegations. "This is to help people," a spokesman said. "There's no ulterior motive." The biggest concern for the Councilman is that historic districts continue to expand across the city that they do not adversely impact homeowners abilities to maintain their properties.

Whatever the cause, it is a reminder of the powerful influence, perhaps unmatched by any other interest group, that the real estate lobby in the city. Is the landmarks commission up to the challenge?

mchaban@observer.com

Stamp of approval, or trouble? Leo Reynolds/Flickr

Is the city’s Landmarks Law broken?

To the uninitiated, that would have been the likely conclusion from a hearing held at the City Council today. Eleven different pieces of legislation addressing myriad issues at the commission were debated. Nearly half of the council’s 59 member made an appearance, grilling officials from the Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Department of Buildings over problems perceived, parochial and patrician at the city agencies.

The city is under assault from a nanny state stuck in the past seemed to be the clear message.

For the large crowd assembled in protest for what turned out to be a four hour meeting, the case was quite the opposite: It was the city’s daring Landmarks Preservation Commission, keeper of the soul of the city, that was under assault. Of the 54 people who signed up to give testimony before a joint session of two council committees all but one spoke out against the vast majority of the bills.

The panic started on Friday, when a few of the preservationist groups were notified of the hearing. They were alarmed to learn that such a large number of bills, many of which they had never seen, were suddenly being taken up all at once by the council. "This is an unprecedented assault on the Landmarks Preservation Commission," Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, said. A call to action went out—at least a half-dozen, in fact, over various email lists and blogs.

But was this really a shadow campaign against the Landmarks Preservation Commission, one orchestrated by Big Real Estate, to hit back at preservationists following the creation of the controversial Downtown Brooklyn Skyscraper district? In that effort, groups like the Real Estate Board of New York saw a commission overreaching, “saving” buildings they viewed as unfit for the recognition. And many of the bills presented yesterday seemed to address some of those concerns. On their face they made sense, in a perfect world, but in the eyes of the commission they amounted to unfunded mandates.

"All of these processes—surveys, reviews, research, report writing and designation—require judgment, time and expertise," Jenny Fernandez, director of intergovernmental and community relations at the commission, said. "The chair and executive staff must set priorities based on a number of factors, and the fact is that our resources are limited and setting these priorities is crucial."

The big issue for council members was a bill that would establish a timeline of roughly 33 months for proposed landmarks to be considered. "Everyone had deadlines, there is no reason you should be exempt," zoning committee chair Leroy Comrie scolded. Landmarks subcommittee chair Brad Lander invoked his preteen son, who has a willful disregard for timeliness. Councilman Robert Jackson of Harlem raved about a building it Harlem that had languished for 25 years on the commission's calendar. "That is a lifetime," he said. "You are stifling development."

Ms. Fernandez countered that while it would be nice to make such determinations within the alotted amount of time, the commission lacked the resources and would be forced to abandon hundreds or even thousands of properties a year, considering the commission would be required under the new bills to either agree to consider the project—within a number of months, as required by yet another bill—or agree never to consider it again. Ms. Fernandez pointed out that the commission's portfolio had grown considerably over the past decade at the same time that its resources have been cut (by the mayor, not the council, as everyone was quick to point out).

[Update: A reader points out that in fact Landmarks' budgets have increased considerably under the Bloomberg administration, up 60 percent from $3 million in 2003 to $4.8 million this year. Staffing has risen 40 percent, to 60 full-time employees.]

"This is an end-run on landmarks masquerading as concern for the community," Paul Graziano, a Queens preservationist, told The Observer. "While these are legitimate community concerns, they know the commission cannot afford to do this, and in the end, if the bills are passed, they will only benefit the real estate interests.

The two bills everyone seemed to agree on was one that would halt any construction work on a building as soon as it was calendared for landmarks consideration, preventing landlords from damaging their property as their value is debated. New permits may not be filed, but in some cases existing ones were executed. The other bill would extend protections for historic buildings near construction sites. Currently, properties within 90 feet must be given special attention when nearby work takes place, and the bill would extend that perimeter to 150 feet.

What had preservationists most incensed were two bills that had been newly introduced and that they saw as severely undermining the purpose and spirit of the Landmarks Law. Mr. Bankoff was quick to point out that these two bills were largely ignored by the council members.

The first big problem was a bill that would grandfather in current building materials. A good example would be a wood-framed or brick house that had vinyl siding put up in the intervening years. Any renovation would require the restoration of the original material. Preservationists and the commission argue this restores a neighborhood closer to its original character and is one of the chief purposes of creating a historic district. Landowners and some council members countered that this creates onerous requirements for owners and even ignores the intervening history. "Technology for aluminum siding has gotten very good," Councilman Comrie quipped.

By far the biggest concern was a requirement to craft an economic analysis for any proposed landmarking. "For too long now, landmarking has been misused to address quality of life, neighborhood and development issues where zoning would be more appropriate," Michael Slattery, executive vice-president at the Real Estate Board, said during his testimony.

Speaker after speaker insisted that economics was far from the first concern where landmarks were concerned. "The bottom line is that such buildings provide more tax revenue and sell at a premium over unprotected buildings," historian Michael Henry Adams said, reading testimony on behalf of State Senator Bill Perkins, a former council man.

"Aesthetic issues are equally, or even more important, than economic ones where landmarks are concerned," Andrea Goldwyn, a representative of the Landmarks Conservancy said. "These buildings serve a higher purpose."

The concern about these bills may have been misplaced. Mr. Bankoff said that he feared any of them could come to a vote now that a hearing has been held, but according to officials at the council, and repeated assurances by committee members during yesterday's hearings, no votes on the newest bills will be held until future hearings are held to discuss them further. The flood of bills was simply meant as a way to clear the council's legislative queue, considering all landmarks bills that had been languishing as well as any other relevant issues presented in the new bills, Councilman Lander told The Observer.

"The idea here was to provide an opportunity for people to look at and comment on a diversity of bills and we'll go from there," Councilman Lander said. "A lot of the pertinent issues in these bills still have to be addressed."

Still, preservationists are not entirely comfortable with these assurances. "Few bills under consideration today will advance the cause of historic preservation in any way," Cristobel Gough, secretary of the Society for the Architecture of the City, said. "Several arc calculated to undercut  existing protections, eliminate necessary checks and balances and cripple the Landmarks Preservation Commission."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

(Amex Foundation)

It's the battle of the brownstones, balustrades and bulkheads!

Forty New York City landmarks across all five boroughs are vying for a $3 million prize courtesy the American Express Foundation. From today through May 21, anyone can visit Parnters in Preservation and vote for sites ranging from the Coney Island carousel to the Lower East Side's Tenement Museum to the Mind-Builders Creative Arts Center in the Bronx.

“We are proud to join the National Trust for Historic Preservation in spotlighting the need to sustain New York City’s many important landmarks, which in turn expands economic vitality and growth,” Amex CEO Kenneth Chenault said at the Metropolitan Museum (a classic not on the list) earlier today. “The 40 selected sites reflect the awe-inspiring range of landmarks that makes New York the city it is today.”

The Amex Foundation is embracing social media for the campaign—you can vote once a day, but not ISP ballot-stuffing, please—as well as urban media: Preservation Station vehicles will travel around the city, raising awareness and allowing passersby to vote.

Now if only we could decide between the Tug Pegasus & Waterfront Museum Barge and the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center. We would have voted for the Guggenheim, but do they really need the money?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The graybeard of old buildings. (Landmarks! West)

Everyone has their favorite section of The Times. For some, it is Business Day, Dining or the Op-Ed page. Who doesn't love to hate the Styles section (or is it hate to love?) or gaze longingly at the properties in the "What You Get For..." real estate column, constantly reminding us of the price we foolhardily pay to be New Yorkers.

For a certain subset of readers, nothing delights more than Christopher Gray and his Streetscapes column, a remarkable tour of the city's ephemeral architectural history. Today, in a very personal column, Mr. Gray describes how he first fell in love with old buildings—four in particular, in fact.

But I know that from my midteens I liked old things, the heft of them, the burnished quality, the evident history of an artifact — perhaps I should have grown up to be Ralph Lauren’s window dresser. I am not sure what really tipped me toward architecture instead of vintage polo mallets, but I do remember a sense of indignation maturing during the demolition of four buildings around 1970.

From high-minded graffiti to a nearly "ganged" wheelchair, one with Bakelite arms, in a grand old old folks home, it is the kind of story that will hopefully give readers new insight into Mr. Gray's writing and the city.

(For those dying to know, it is probably a combination of LEGO castles and a college course, Architecture and Postmodern Culture, that set this writer on his present course.)

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC