On the eve of another hearing before the Landmarks Preservation Commission on an application to demolish the Edward and Theresa O'Toole Medical Services Building of St. Vincent's Hospital as part of a major expansion plan for the hospital, the commission was sued today by several community and historic preservation groups seeking to overturn its ruling last October that approved the hospital's "hardship application" to demolish the distinctive structure.

The low-rise building was erected in 1964 as headquarters for the National Maritime Union and its cantilevered design by Albert Ledner incorporates scalloped edges that evoke portholes and has a glass-block base that the law suit maintains "gave it a sense of floating above the ground." The law suit notes that when the building was dedicated "it was singled out by Ada Louise Huxtable, then the architectural critic for The New York Times, for its audacity in breaking with the international style and its effort to reflect the maritimes activities that it housed."

The organizations who are the plaintiffs include the Historic Districts Council, the Docomomo New York-Tristate, the Historic Neighborhood Alliance, Landmark West, the Protect the Village Historic District and numerous individuals including Carol Greitzner and three nearby residential buildings.

The hospital wants to replace the building with a 299-foot-high new hospital building. The hospital has entered an agreement with the Rudin Family to demolish some of its properties across Seventh Avenue and permit its others to be used for residential condominiums and in long discussions with the community has already revised its plans downward somewhat.

The O'Toole Building occupies the west blockfront on Seventh Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets and is just to the north of a full triangular block owned by the hospital that is used for trucking facility and used to be the site of the Loew's Sheridan movie theater.

The hospital acquired the O'Toole building in 1973 for about $6 million and has used it for doctors' offices and outpatient services.

The suit maintained that newly appointed commissioner Fred Bland "used a balancing test to reach his concludions, stating that the O'Toole Building was not so worthy a landmark as to offset the Hospital's needs, whereas another protected landmark could have been." "The question of hardship was not the basis of his judgment. A second LPC member, Commissioner Christopher Moore, based his conclusion in significant part on financial considerations, even though St. Vincent's had explicitly said that it was not seeking a hardship determination on that basis," the suite continued."

The suit argued that the commission's decision to grant the hardship application was "arbitrary and capricious" and that the commission "failed to make an adequate investigation of alternatives."

The hospital did not claim "financial hardship, and never opened their books to Landmarks or the public, or anyone else," said Albert K. Butzel, counsel for Protect the Village Historic District.

An article in today's on-line edition of The New York Times by Glenn Collins said that the hospital issued a statement today in which it said that "Sadly this lawsuit seeks to prevent St. Vincent's from building a modern medical facility to serve Manhattan's West Side and improve health care for thousands of New Yorkers," adding that it has "taken every step possible to work with the city and local community, and we will continue to do so."