The Landmarks Preservation Commission will hold an "informational" meeting Monday at 6 PM in Room 10-T at Riverside Church at 91 Claremont Avenue on a proposed Morningside Heights Historic District.
In a March 1, 2009 article in The New York Times, Robin Pogrebin wrote that "Neighborhood residents and public officials have been pressing for more than a decade to have the neighborhood designated a historic district."
It added that "their formal request for evaluation, submitted in 1996 to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, championed the area - home to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Columbia University and Barnard College, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Manhattan School of Music - as 'a sustained, exuberant, cogent expression of the American Renaissance.'"
New York State's Historic Preservation Office deemed three residential buildings on West 115th Street to be historically significant, in January 2009, the article noted.
It also determined that Morningside Heights overall met the criteria for listing on the state and national registers of historic places.
The article said that "Daniel J. O'Donnell, the state assemblyman who represents Morningside Heights, is tired of waiting. 'We've gotten absolutely nothing out of' the commission, he said. Last spring he filed a Freedom of Information Act request for any commission documents pertaining to the designation of Morningside Heights as a historic district. Part of Mr. O'Donnell's request was denied, his office said; it is unclear what documents were withheld or why. The assemblyman was given access to 200 pages of commission documents, of which about 75 were pertinent to the Morningside Heights Historic District, according to his spokesman, Shane Seger. He added that the papers did not include initial research submitted to the commission by a group advocating for the designation, the Morningside Heights Historic District Committee, and he called this 'a glaring omission.'"
"Most of the Morningside Heights neighborhood took shape," the article said, "from 1900 to 1920. The arrival of the IRT subway line in 1904 brought a rush of speculative construction of upper-middle-class apartment houses in a Beaux Arts style on Broadway, Riverside Drive, Claremont Avenue and Cathedral Parkway. Most of them survive, as do more modest yet distinguished row houses and brownstones on the side streets. At the same time cornerstones were laid for even more ambitious buildings at major institutions like Columbia, Riverside Church, St. Luke's Hospital, Union Theological Seminary and the Church of Notre Dame. 'It's the largest concentration of institutional buildings in New York,' said Andrew S. Dolkart, the director of Columbia's historic preservation program. The local architecture remains almost intact. 'Largely it's the neighborhood that was here in 1912,' Mr. Dolkart said."
"Preservation advocates," the article said, "say that as the largest property owner in Morningside Heights, Columbia has been the biggest obstacle to designation, opposing historic status to maintain its flexibility....Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia, declined through a spokesman to comment on the issue of a potential historic district. A university spokesman, Robert Hornsby, said in a statement, 'We are certainly open to the study of an appropriately defined district in the area.' But he said that Columbia considered it unnecessary to include its campus in such a district because the university 'has long been a good steward of its valuable architectural legacy.'"
In a March 1, 2009 article in The New York Times, Robin Pogrebin wrote that "Neighborhood residents and public officials have been pressing for more than a decade to have the neighborhood designated a historic district."
It added that "their formal request for evaluation, submitted in 1996 to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, championed the area - home to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Columbia University and Barnard College, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Manhattan School of Music - as 'a sustained, exuberant, cogent expression of the American Renaissance.'"
New York State's Historic Preservation Office deemed three residential buildings on West 115th Street to be historically significant, in January 2009, the article noted.
It also determined that Morningside Heights overall met the criteria for listing on the state and national registers of historic places.
The article said that "Daniel J. O'Donnell, the state assemblyman who represents Morningside Heights, is tired of waiting. 'We've gotten absolutely nothing out of' the commission, he said. Last spring he filed a Freedom of Information Act request for any commission documents pertaining to the designation of Morningside Heights as a historic district. Part of Mr. O'Donnell's request was denied, his office said; it is unclear what documents were withheld or why. The assemblyman was given access to 200 pages of commission documents, of which about 75 were pertinent to the Morningside Heights Historic District, according to his spokesman, Shane Seger. He added that the papers did not include initial research submitted to the commission by a group advocating for the designation, the Morningside Heights Historic District Committee, and he called this 'a glaring omission.'"
"Most of the Morningside Heights neighborhood took shape," the article said, "from 1900 to 1920. The arrival of the IRT subway line in 1904 brought a rush of speculative construction of upper-middle-class apartment houses in a Beaux Arts style on Broadway, Riverside Drive, Claremont Avenue and Cathedral Parkway. Most of them survive, as do more modest yet distinguished row houses and brownstones on the side streets. At the same time cornerstones were laid for even more ambitious buildings at major institutions like Columbia, Riverside Church, St. Luke's Hospital, Union Theological Seminary and the Church of Notre Dame. 'It's the largest concentration of institutional buildings in New York,' said Andrew S. Dolkart, the director of Columbia's historic preservation program. The local architecture remains almost intact. 'Largely it's the neighborhood that was here in 1912,' Mr. Dolkart said."
"Preservation advocates," the article said, "say that as the largest property owner in Morningside Heights, Columbia has been the biggest obstacle to designation, opposing historic status to maintain its flexibility....Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia, declined through a spokesman to comment on the issue of a potential historic district. A university spokesman, Robert Hornsby, said in a statement, 'We are certainly open to the study of an appropriately defined district in the area.' But he said that Columbia considered it unnecessary to include its campus in such a district because the university 'has long been a good steward of its valuable architectural legacy.'"
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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