Landmarking for Bergdorf Still Faces Council Hurdle

The Bergdorf Goodman at 745 Fifth Avenue, just below Grand Army Plaza at the southeast corner of Central Park, was designated a landmark on December 13. | MICHAEL SHIREY

BY JACKSON CHEN | On a day when the Landmarks Preservation Commission tackled the final items in its Backlog Initiative, the agency, on December 13, declared the Bergdorf Goodman building at 754 Fifth Avenue a landmark.

Completed in 1928 on the site of the former Vanderbilt Mansion between 57th and 58th Streets, the Bergdorf building has long stood as a gateway to Fifth Avenue’s gilded shopping district for pedestrians coming from the Upper East Side and Central Park.

To address 95 items that had been on the LPC’s calendar since prior to 2010 – with many properties in limbo for many years more than that – the agency began its Backlog Initiative to reach final decisions on all of them. The Bergdorf building’s landmarking efforts began in 1970 and were taken up again in the ‘80s, but the LPC was unable to reach any conclusion on several occasions.

In the most recent public hearings that considered Bergdorf, preservationists turned out to praise its unique characteristics, both architecturally and culturally.

412 East 85th Street, in 2007. | LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION

“It is incredibly important in that it’s a symbol of New York,” Theodore Grunewald, a longtime preservation advocate, said of the building. “It defines one whole side, the southern edge, of one of New York City’s most significant public spaces, Grand Army Plaza.”

Many supporters of the building’s preservation noted, as well, the building’s role in the neighborhood’s emergence as the center of luxury shopping in Manhattan.

Known for an early 20th century modern architectural style with distinctive tall, intricate arches above the doorways, the building has changed very little since its construction in the ‘20s, according to Andrea Goldwyn, the New York Landmarks Conservancy’s director of public policy. She said the only alteration made was a new doorway in the ‘80s. Most of the sand-colored building remains pristine, though signs of age are apparent with the black stone stains near the Bergdorf-Goodman logo above the store’s refurbished main entrance.

Grunewald said he was encouraged that the agency voted unanimously to designate Bergdorf, but he expressed concern about the possibility the City Council might overturn that decision. Members of the Council have not spoken out on the issue, but Grunewald said the opposition could put pressure on them.

In recent public hearings, the building’s owner, 754 Fifth Avenue Associates, L.P., and representatives of Bergdorf Goodman expressed their disapproval of landmarking.

412 East 85th Street, as seen in 1932. | LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION

The final Backlog Initiative meeting also landmarked 412 East 85th Street, a pre-Civil War wood-frame farmhouse, as it is one of the few remaining examples of buildings from the earliest era of development on the Upper East Side.

The commissioners decided to de-calendar several interior conference rooms, a lecture hall, and the elevator lobby of 809 United Nations Plaza. The LPC typically only considers interior landmarking for locations generally accessible to the public, and in removing these sites, at least for now, the commission noted the tight security in the area that limits access to them.

“In Manhattan, you have incredibly elaborate architectural masterpieces as well as various buildings that represent cultural and social history of New York and also several incredibly great religious properties,” LPC Chair Meenakshi Srinivasan in discussing the designations made on December 13.

In total, the LPC designated 10 new landmarks that day, bringing the total number of new sites landmarked over the 18-month life of the Backlog Initiative to 27 citywide.

“This has really been a mammoth undertaking but I believe it is really well worth it,” Srinivasan said. “I’m very pleased that over 27 properties that we’ve designated, they represented all five boroughs.”