The battle over the future of two old buildings in South Williamsburg is creating some strange alliances — all of which were on display on Monday at a curbside press conference in front of 118 and 120 South 8th Street (photo on the jump). Members of the Orthodox Jewish and Hispanic communities joined artists, activitists and councilmen to express their opposition to developer Michael Zazza tearing down two of the area’s oldest buildings to construct a 20-story residential tower (which at this point he can do as-of-right). Hannah Bloch, who’s been spearheading the movement for the past several months, seems to genuinely care about preserving the buildings — and to have grave reservations about the mid-block location of the tower from an urban planning perspective. As for the other other two groups, from where we sit, their sudden interest in preservation reeks of opportunism and is particularly ironic given their complete lack of concern about the borough’s architectural heritage (and future) up to this point.

But what about the merit of the landmarking request? The buildings were striking enough that we thought to take this photo of them during a stroll back in the Spring of ’05. Among the organizations who spend their days thinking about preservation issues, there’s a lack of consensus about whether the buildings should be preserved based on their architectural merit (despite agreement about their meaningfulness in the borough’s history). While the Four Borough Preservation Alliance has backed the landmarking effort, neither the Municipal Arts Society, Historic District Council or the more local Waterfront Preservation Alliance has deemed this to be a battle worth fighting. David Yassky, previously reported to be in favor of landmarking these buildings, now is reserving judgement until LPC makes an official comment. If the question is, Are these buildings worth preserving, we’d say “absolutely”. But it sounds to us like the behind-the-scenes issue is whether, given the preservation movement’s lack of resources, these two buildings are worth spending valuable time and political capital on. That’s a trickier question, and one we are ill-equipped to answer.
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