To Our Members: Thank You for Your Support!
We want to extend our heartfelt thanks for standing by us in 2024. Your support plays a vital role in our ability to be enthusiastic and effective advocates on behalf of New York’s abundance of architectural treasures … for those of us who live and work here and for those who enjoy visiting our great city.
LOANS & GRANTS
It was another busy year for our loan and grant programs as we helped 54 homeowners, religious institutions, and non-profits maintain their historic buildings and continue community programs.
We pledged 40 Sacred Sites Grants across the state totaling $558,250. Collectively, our grantees offered programs and activities that reached some 265,000 people beyond their members. These grants included $10,000 to the 1927 Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue on the Lower East Side for roof replacement. Our Lady of Victory Shrine in Lackawanna, a 1925 neo-Renaissance-style church, received $40,000 to help replace its copper dome.
We advanced $625,000 in Historic Properties Fund loans for nine projects in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. For instance, we oversaw window restoration and replacement at a small Co-op in Park Slope and restored a large parapet at a Jackson Heights Co-op.
We awarded two Nonprofit Technical Assistance Grants (NTAG) in Queens totaling $23,950. One restored a wheelchair ADA ramp at the Lewis Latimer House Museum in Flushing for a new entrance to an interactive exhibit on Latimer, an African American inventor. The other helped with a mansard restoration at the Poppenhusen Institute, which offers cultural, historic, and educational programming in College Point.
Our $51,700 in Emergency Preservation Grants included helping the United Palace Theater in Washington Heights with a conditions assessment of the facade. This elaborate 1930 former Loew’s Wonder Theater now offers a variety of arts programs. We assisted with structural repairs at 1857-59 Stephens-Prier House, the administration building for Historic Richmond Town on Staten Island. We also aided the Hebrew Actors Foundation with roof and masonry repairs on the former 19th-century row house that has served as their headquarters since 1920.
PRESERVATION SERVICES
Our technical staff answered some 250 “hotline” calls from persons looking for qualified architects and contractors to work on their properties. You can contact our Preservation Hotline with questions at 212.995.5260 or by email.
LONGTERM PROJECTS
We continued work restoring the Olmsted-Beil House on Staten Island, where Frederick Law Olmsted began his landscaping practice. We restored natural light in the building by removing plywood from the windows and installing protective plexiglass panels.
ADVOCACY
While our basic programs hummed along, we faced unfounded claims that preservation is responsible for the lack of affordable housing in the City. After all, only some 5% of the City is landmarked. We achieved some concessions in the massive City of Yes for Housing Opportunity rezoning, protecting some green spaces, and ensuring City Council approval of large air rights transfers. However, the zoning changes favor the development of large new market-rate buildings throughout the City and communities will have little to say about development in their areas.
The blocks around Penn Station remain in limbo after the courts turned down two lawsuits we supported challenging the State’s threat of eminent domain. The block immediately south of the Station faces the most immediate threat. Amtrak wants to demolish homes, local businesses, and landmark quality buildings for a $16-$18 billion underground terminal for New Jersey Transit. Amtrak denies that adding through-running at Penn Station, which would not require neighborhood demolition, isn’t feasible now— saying it couldn’t happen for some 60 years. And once grand plans for Penn Station seem to have shrunk.
On the plus side, the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) has voted to calendar the Breuer building on Madison and 75th Street for consideration as an individual and interior landmark. We were one of the groups that encouraged LPC to do this. Designed by Marcel Breuer and completed in 1966, the brutalist building once housed the Whitney Museum. More recently, it was the site of the Frick Madison. It is now owned by Sotheby’s New York. A hearing by LPC is expected to be scheduled by early January.
Our work in the neighborhoods is always rewarding as we meet so many people devoted to preserving the buildings and institutions that matter to them. Our advocacy has its ups and downs.
But we never stay down. This magnificent, complex, and sometimes exasperating City always remains worth fighting for.
Thank you for joining us in the fight to preserve the City we love.