Civic Council Wants to Supersize Park Slope Historic District
On Thursday night, the Park Slope Civic Council set forth an ambitious plan to expand the Park Slope Historic District in three phases over the next several years; if completed, the effort would result in the largest landmarked area in the city, reported the Brooklyn Paper. Phase 1 would address the area bounded by Flatbush,…
On Thursday night, the Park Slope Civic Council set forth an ambitious plan to expand the Park Slope Historic District in three phases over the next several years; if completed, the effort would result in the largest landmarked area in the city, reported the Brooklyn Paper. Phase 1 would address the area bounded by Flatbush, Prospect Park West, 15th Street and 7th Avenue; Phase 2 would include the blocks between 5th and 7th Avenues between Union and 15th Streets; Phase 3 would encompass the strip between 4th and 5th Avenues all the way from Flatbush to 15th Street. In all, more than 5,000 new buildings would gain protection through the plan. “There is so much of Park Slope that is at risk and in danger of development,” said Peter Bray, chair of the Council’s Expansion Committee. We want to preserve everything that needs to be preserved. The Landmarks Preservation Commission will begin studying the request but in all likelihood will have its own opinions about whether the entire area gets designated. For a historic district, we look for a distinct sense of place, and a coherent streetscape, said LPC Spokesperson Lisi de Bourbon. (Click map to enlarge.)
Slope’s District Would Be Truly Historic Under Plan [Brooklyn Paper]
There are definitely blocks worth landmarking that aren’t, and also many oddball blocks on the fringes. Some of these oddball blocks do have some buildings of historic significance mixed in with a lot of run of the mill stuff and worse. Expansion of landmarked ares is needed but Civics Council should work with an exacto knife to make a credible proposal. Montrose is right that some areas of CHN and elsewhere need protection before we start having landmarks enter the Slope’s vinyl siding district.
the existing boundaries were created at a time when people’s idea of “park slope” encompassed a much smaller geographic area than it does today. In those days Park Slope barely extended halfway between Seventh and Sixth Avenues. Also, apartment buildings along CPW, which tend to date from the 20th century rather than the nineteenth, were excluded. That makes no sense and was done for political reasons as bob marvin stated. But CPW really should be part of the historic ditrict. The new district should extend to Sixth Avenue and go all the way from Flatbush to 14th. Most of what we think of today as Park Slope has no landmark protection. For now, that is not a worry, but when the next mutant asshat bubble hits, all bets will be off.
Good luck to them, for the most part. They should be prepared to scale down a bit, however, and accept that the various phases will be smaller, and it will take many years to get it all done. LPC does not have the staff or the budget to investigate and document over a thousand buildings for one area, while also doing the rest of its job watchdogging what already is landmarked, and adding more historic districts from long lists from five boroughs, in addition to Park Slope.
I think much of the Slope is certainly worthy of landmarking, and long overdue. But the same can also be said of Crown Heights North, Bed Stuy, Victorian Flatbush, parts of Bushwick, PLG, Bay Ridge, and other areas just in Brooklyn alone. Some people think too much is already landmarked, but in actuality, only 3% of the total buildings in the entire City of New York are landmarked.
Landmarks needs more staff, a bigger budget, and more people on board who understand the needs and issues of preservationists in the outer boroughs, not just those in tonier areas of Manhattan. Since that is not likely to happen in this fiscal crisis, we all need to do all we can to aid in preservation efforts, and keep an eye out for any development trying to undermine those efforts.
There’s some awfully ugly stuff included in those blocs but it’ll probably take a lot of time for all 3 stages to get going so everyone will start dismantling the nice places to put up more trash before the HD designation takes effect.
Any push to designate between 4th Ave – 5th Ave or 6th to 4th above 9th st is clearly more about anti-development than about historic preservation, and therefore should be universally fought….if you use Landmark designation as an anti-development tool, you actually risk the protections the designation should give in real historic districts.
I agree that it’s about time, but I think the problem with the existing HD boundaries isn’t their age (which is irrelevant) but the fact that they were kept relatively small to avoid controversy–a problem with MANY HDs.
I agree with snarkslope.
Hmmmm, I don’t think that much of the “strip between 4th and 5th Avenues all the way from Flatbush to 15th Street” qualifies as a “coherent streetscape.”
It’s about time!
The current boundaries date to the electric typewriter age.