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| The Broadway Fashion Building, long a Landmark West! Wishlist Candidate was designated in the last expansion of the district and is now protected. |
Today’s online and tomorrow’s print edition of the New York Times features a piece which examines the actions taken by the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) last Tuesday morning. Their designation of the Riverside-West End Historic District omitted 33 buildings from the original boundary, 21 of them on Broadway alone. Journalist Matt Chaban examines the rationale behind this decision after five years of study, and suggests that this is an omen of “how the de Blasio administration views its responsibility for the city’s historic buildings”.
Historically, the LPC votes on 94% of the Historic Districts which come before them within two years (and 80% of the individual landmarks that come before them within one year). With more than double the time allotted to this Historic District study, the quantity and quality of the “carve outs” is unprecedented. Buildings which have long been on the Landmark West! Wish List that fell within the original boundary but were carved out, include the Cornwall. A building “on the north side of that corner [Broadway and 90th St], is a quintessential prewar building, a 12-story layer cake of luscious red bricks and terra cotta icing with two bays of apartments, filigreed corners and balconies. At its base are a diner, a liquor store, a dry cleaner and a locksmith, all diminutive and neon-lit”…and none are protected.