The Landmarks Preservation Commission today voted unanimously granted landmark status to the Haffen Building in the Melrose section of the Bronx, and Noonan Plaza Apartments in the borough's Highbridge neighborhood.

It also held a public hearing to create a Grand Concourse Historic District in the Bronx, 12 individual landmarks in Brooklyn and Manhattan and it placed six other Manhattan buildings on its calendar for consideration as landmarks.

The Haffen Building, completed in 1902, was constructed by a brewery owner and son of a German immigrant, and Noonan Plaza, completed in 1931, was built by an Irish-born developer, and attracted many upwardly mobile, second-generation East European Jewish immigrants from the crowded buildings and streets of the Lower East Side.

The 7-story, Beaux-Arts Style Haffen Building at 2804 Third Avenue between 147th and 148th Streets in the Bronx, was completed in 1902.

It was commissioned by Matthias Haffen Jr., at the time a co-owner of the former J. & M. Haffen Brewery Company, which was founded in 1856 by his father, Matthias Haffen Sr., a German immigrant.

The building was designed by Michael J. Garvin, the architect of the landmark Bronx County Courthouse at East 161st Street and Third Avenue. Garvin was the Bronx's first commissioner of buildings and the secretary to Matthias's brother Louis F. Haffen, the first Bronx borough president. The Haffens, considered one of the most influential families in the Bronx by the turn of the 20th century, were responsible for many of the borough's infrastructure improvements and organized several civic, social and financial institutions, including the Bronx County Trust Company, the successor to the bank that occupied the ground floor when the Haffen Building opened.

The building helped fuel the rise of the Hub as an important business center, which later attracted department stores, movie palaces, vaudeville theaters and boutiques. The area prospered well into the 20th century.

Both facades feature the formal base-shaft-capital composition, as well as exuberant, carved ornament depicting festoons of fruit, flowers and ribbons; laurel wreaths and sheaves of wheat, an apparent reference to the family business.

Noonan Plaza Apartments at 105-149 West 168th Street between Nelson and Ogden avenues is considered one of the most impressive Art Deco style rental apartment complexes in the Bronx.

It was built in 1931 for Bernard J. Noonan, an Irish-born developer, and is divided into eight, interconnected, six-to-eight-story sections, each with elevators, exterior light courts and interior garden courts, providing multiple exposures to the apartments.

The complex, shown at the right, was designed by the architects Horace Ginsberg, a Russian immigrant, and Marvin Fine, two of the most prolific architects of apartment house design in the Bronx, who were also responsible for Park Plaza Apartments, also a New York City landmark, on Jerome Avenue, and several other 1920s apartment buildings in Highbridge.

"This intact Art Deco complex offered a stylish, spacious affordable alternative for New Yorkers who were looking for a better quality of life," said Chairman Tierney. "It was part of a wave of housing that became a symbol of upward mobility and set a new standard that was later replicated throughout New York City."

The six Manhattan buildings that were calendared for public hearings include the Beaux-Arts style, circa 1904, Hotel Wolcott at 4 West 31st Street; the Neo-Renaissance style, circa 1907, Mills Hotel No. 3 at 485 Seventh Avenue; the Italian/Spanish Renaissance style, circa 1926 Madison Belmont Building at 181 Madison Ave.; the Art Deco style, circa 1931 office tower at 500 Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street; the Renaissance Revival style, circa 1907 Engineers' Club at 32 West 40th Street; and the Colonial Revival style, circa 1915 Grand Street Playhouse at 466 Grand Street.