BY SAM SPOKONY | The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday approved the creation of a new historic district in the East Village.
The East Village/Lower East Side Historic District comprises 330 buildings between E. Second and E. Seventh Sts., mainly around Second Ave., as well as some between First Ave. and Aveune A. The newly landmarked buildings represent a diverse mix, including tenements, religious institutions, row houses and theaters. The district had been considered by the commission since 2010.
The L.P.C. commissioners voted 6 to 1 in favor of the district. All the commissioners expressed the importance of maintaining a neighborhood that had been home to various groups of immigrants since the 19th century, and they acknowledged the importance of the East Village as an artistic haven in the latter half of the 20th century.
“I’m very proud of this,” said L.P.C. Chairman Robert Tierney, as he introduced the vote. “We’re ensuring that an environment which tells a rich cultural and immigrant story will be here for generations to come. I think it’s a good day for the Landmarks Commission, and a good day for New York City.”
Margery Perlmutter, who voiced the L.P.C.’s only dissenting opinion, argued that commission members were not focusing properly on their goal as preservationists, mainly because she believed too many undeserving tenements were included.
“Are we trying to preserve everything in sight?” Perlmutter asked the commission, estimating that around 200 of the newly landmarked buildings are tenements. “If we look at almost any historic district in New York City, there are tenements in them, all over the place. I don’t think that this district needs to preserve [so many].”
The new district was welcomed by advocates who had fought for its creation over the past two years, notably Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, who was on hand for the vote alongside a couple dozen other supporters.
After calling Perlmutter’s dissension “very odd” in an interview following the vote, Berman explained that his organization will now be focused on educating the public about the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District, as well as continuing to push for more landmarks around that neighborhood.
“This is tremendous progress,” he said, “and we hope it’ll be the first step, not the last.”
(As for the new district’s name, the district is located in what most today call the East Village, though many also still refer to it as the Lower East Side — its historic name. So the new district’s name includes both.)
Many religious institutions within the district’s boundaries had opposed the proposal ever since it was first introduced, claiming that landmark status will bring undue financial and bureaucratic hardship regarding renovations.
Richard Wright, a longtime member of the Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection, at 59 E. Second St., attended the vote, and said that the new district had been “indiscriminately applied, because of the sensibilities of a few nostalgic preservationists.” He went so far as to say that his church was preparing to hire legal representation to “fight the L.P.C. regarding our religious expression.”
When asked what he meant by this, Wright explained that his church frequently changes the religious iconography affixed to the building’s facade, depending on the season and accompanying religious holidays. The inability to do that without receiving L.P.C. approval each time, he said, would be an onerous burden.
Before approving the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District, the L.P.C. removed six buildings — all either on or adjacent to First Ave., between E. Sixth and E. Seventh Sts. — that had previously been included within the boundaries. Four of the properties were removed because the L.P.C.’s research department believed they lacked historical and architectural significance; the other two were removed because their owner objected to the designation.
Berman later commented on what he called the “unusual” nature of that last-minute removal. He noted that, unlike the rest of the process that went into creating the new district, there had been no hearing scheduled to notify the public of the change.
