The honorable W. W. de Blasio, Jr. Mayor of New York City December 3, 2014 City Hall New York, NY 10007 Dear Mayor de Blasio, Black lives matter and so do black landmarks! Few, and far between, too often overlooked, destroyed as casually and callously as black boys, the places that embody our culture, our history, our crucial and transformative contribution, are essential to our country’s very healing and redemption. In order for black lives to matter, black history and landmarks must matter as well. A year ago you were elected by a landslide. Like so many, proudly, happily, hopefully, I cast my vote for you, and for certain change: from growing inequality, against persisting unfairness and injustice. All these problems, motivated by avarice, irreparably altering New York City, we knew you would effectively combat. This letter will focus on but a single area in which your policy has been disappointing. Attempting to appear even-handed, to developers, you appointed a bureaucrat to lead the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Your Chair clearly has little knowledge of what makes the trust of preserving and protecting our extraordinary architectural heritage so imperative. On the one hand, it is a matter of dollars; from tourists, from movie-makers, businesses and residents. They all celebrate, and are willing to even pay a premium to enjoy the distinctive neighborhoods comprising the world’s greatest city. On the other, it is all about sensibility too, about individual pride, community pride; to experience an architectural setting representative of all the people, rich and poor, from every background, whose combined efforts have made New York such a magnificent place. It might please the New York Real Estate Board and their political allies to do something never done before, but to remove 96 prospective buildings and districts under consideration for landmark designation from the Landmarks Commission’s calendar, without a public hearing, is something you and no one else, could ever fully recover from. Two years ago, the Community Planning Board in Central Harlem determined that even in the neighborhood acclaimed as the African American Cultural Capital, a mere 3.7 % of buildings were city recognized landmarks. By contrast, in Greenwich Village, two thirds of the buildings are official landmarks. But your Landmarks Chair proposes to strip six potential Harlem landmarks of what little protection they have as calendared buildings, part of that list of 96: Lowe’s 175th Street Theatre, the YMCA Harlem Branch, the Yuengling Brewery Complex, St. Joseph’s Church, St. Paul’s Church and School and St. Paul’s Rectory. What will become of these buildings? In 2007 the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the third oldest African American congregation in New York State, took a high-powered delegation to call on the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Their number included Gordon Davis, the former New York City Parks’ Commissioner, David Dinkins, the city‘s first black mayor, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, his predecessor C. Virginia Fields, and Peg Breen of the city‘s most important landmarks’ advocacy group, the New York Landmarks Conservancy. There were no crowds of community residents present when this select group petitioned the LPC. No one else in Harlem had been advised about this important proceeding. Nor as one might logically suspect, was this lobbying deputation’s mission to gain landmarks protection for Harlem commensurate with other communities and the area’s lustrous legacy. The commission, which had selected the block-long 1920s Casino Renaissance for evaluation as a potential landmark in 1991, were beseeched instead, to remove it from the agencys calendar. Insisting regulation would kill beneficial development plans, the Abyssinian church delegation promised to restore the ballroom portion of the complex and to retain the facade of the theatre, behind which, an apartment tower would rise, offering much needed jobs and housing. In effect, church supporters made a remarkable claim, that the best way to save and restore this landmark, was to be allowed to partly destroy it. This was hardly the sort of argument that many would have bet was liable to be convincing to the body responsible for preserving for future generations, the collective architectural riches of New York’s past, but, it worked! Now, not even as little as a partial restoration will occur at a building that once reverberated with the excitement of performances by the likes of Fletcher Henderson and Ella Fitzgerald, that resounded with the cheering on at Joe Louis bouts or the Harlem Renn’s professional basket ball team games, that swelled with joy at dances and festivities like the wedding reception of Joyce and David Dinkins fifty years ago. The continuity of the glory of a great past will cease. Instead it’s been announced the site has been sold for $15-million to a developer. Unceremoniously, the old ballroom and the theater facade will be demolished, replaced by an apartment building like so many others, contributing apace to Harlem gentrification. What your LPC Chair contemplates proposes the Renny debacle, across the city, 100-times over. Ever eager for you to fulfill a great mandate still anticipated by so many, I beseech you to reconsider this perilous action. Sincerely Yours, Michael Henry Adams
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 06:10:05 +0000
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