The Landmarks Preservation Commission held hearings yesterday without taking votes on proposed extensions of the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District and the Upper East Side Historic District.

The extension of the SoHo district was originally proposed in 2006 by the Metropolitan Chapter of The Victorian society of America and the proposal has been endorsed by Community Board 2, the SoHo Alliance and Friends of SoHo.

It would include 72 buildings on the west side of West Broadway between Houston Street and the southwest corner of Broome Street and on the east side of Crosby Street from just south of Spring Street to the south side of Howard Street as well as the buildings on the north side of Broome Street between Crosby and Lafayette streets and the buildings on the south side of Howard Street between Broadway and Crosby Street.

The SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District was designated in 1973 and contains the world's largest concentration of Victorian full and partial cast-iron-fronted facades on 26 blocks south of Houston Street.

In a 47-page document about the proposed extension, the Victorian Society's Metropolitan Chapter noted that "the boundaries of the designated historic district do not reflect...the full complement of distinctive cast-iron-fronted buildings or the natural borders of the nineteenth-century commercial district that gave rise to this and other characteristic architecture." "Ever since the designation of the district, Margot Gayle," one of the society's founding members, "has been concerned about the future of the cast-iron-fronted buildings that were excluded from the district's boundaries," and a committee of the society concluded that the district's boundaries "are indeed arbitrary and the buildings on the district's eastern and western edges are worthy of inclusion in an expanded historic district."

The elegant Ms. Gayle continued to be very active until she died last year at the age of 100.

"As a matter of principle," the report continued, "historic districts should include both sides of a street" and "it is fortunate that over thirty years after the designation of the SoHo-Cast-Iron Historic District, the areas that should have originally been included within the boundaries of the district, but which were excluded, still retain much architectural integrity."

The proposed extension would include some very fine buildings such as 28 Howard Street that was designed D. & J. Jardine in 1872 for F. G. Frazer and its Crosby Street facade divided the building's 12-bay, Italianate/Neo-Grec facade into three sections by incorporating unusual panels...with the result "a striking and lively facade."

The SoHo extension proposal was endorsed by the Historic Districts Council that declared in a statement that while "the area has the highest concentration of cast-iron architecture anywhere in the world..., many of the buildings within the district have as good an architectural pedigree and are masonry buildings," adding "regrettably, numerous examples of the same architecture have been left unprotected for decades."

The council also supported extensions of the Upper East Side Historic District along Lexington Avenue between 63rd and 76th Street that the commission also considered yesterday. "This action will fulfill the unfinished business of incorporating into the historic district most of Lexington Avenue in the area as well as most of the streets with reasonably intact blocks of row houses just to the east of the avenue."

"This action is long overdue, and we regret only that some blocks have been diminished in character since the original designation of the historic district and some individual buildings lost or defaced, most noticeably the very recent 'smoothing out' of he exception Parge House on Lexington Avenue....We understand the Friends of the Upper East Side are proposing that storefront guidelines similar to those that now in effect on Madison Avenue should be developed and put into effect on Lexington Avenue."