Crown Heights To Be Landmarked Today (Hopefully)
As we get ready to post this, the powers-that-be at the Landmarks Preservation Commission are most likely in the process of approving the creation of the Crown Heights North Historic District, the 79th such area to date. The first phase of the landmarking, which is centered around Dean Street between Bedford and Kingston Avenues, will…
As we get ready to post this, the powers-that-be at the Landmarks Preservation Commission are most likely in the process of approving the creation of the Crown Heights North Historic District, the 79th such area to date. The first phase of the landmarking, which is centered around Dean Street between Bedford and Kingston Avenues, will place 472 buildings under protection from death and disfigurement. The designation is a symbol of the area’s resurgence from several decades of poverty and decay that in the end preserved its architectural heritage. Quoth The Times:
Paradoxically, the beauty of the architecture owes much to a lack of money in the 1970s and 1980s, when — as in much of Brooklyn and the city — drugs and poverty and crime drove out the movies and the so-called doctors row. No one had the cash to make bad choices. People didn’t paint the outside all kinds of funky colors and do crazy things, Ms. Brown said. They couldn’t afford to.
The designation (if it indeed happens) will be the result of tireless effort by the members of the Crown Heights North Association who have been lobbying the LPC for years to protect the neighborhood. The blocks in Phase 1 were targeted first because the size of the lots made them most vulnerable to development. Can any CH’ers tells us what blocks will be encompassed in Phase 2?
Seeking Landmark Status, and Hoping to Lose a Label [NY Times]
LPC Proposes Historic District Designation for CHN [NYC.gov]
The Richest Architecture in Brooklyn [NY Sun]
Photo by pantsopticon
Good point 12:44–What effect does the landmark designation have on an area’s pricing—any? Significant?
Where do we build new housing now that every neighborhood is landmarked? Shouldn’t cities change as well?
Won’t this just further encourage gentrification and rapid rise in rents? Ooops, I forgot that is the whole point.
Patronizing and snarky…the Times??? Why, say it ain’t so!!! We have a name for their entire school of outer-borough “Strange New Respect” coverage: “Biff and Muffy Take the Subway and Are Surprisingly Impressed.” I missed the piece–did they call the nearest noisy, dirty shopping strip “vibrant,” as if it were a Haitian village marketplace in a Lonely Planet guidebook? (Biff and Muffy love that word.)
I totally found the NY Times patronizing and snarky. The reporter was writing as if he had been sent to some exotic locale and needed to capture the “local color” for the folks in Manhattan who had heard such places existed but never dream of venturing there. It is classic NY Times.
Divorced from contemporary reality.
poverty is the great preserver. it is no paradox. God knows what half the people here have done to their interiors by way of “renovation”….
Phase 2 includes much of what is considered the best of Crown Heights North – roughly Bergen, St. Marks, Prospect Place, Park Place, Sterling Pl, and vacinity, from Bedford to Kingston. These districts aren’t squares, of course, and include certain blocks, or even parts of blocks, and exclude others, poke a block further in one direction, and not in another. It really depends on the architecture and history of each building. Getting phase 2 designated will be key, as these are the “jewels in the crown”, as the CHNA motto states.
Congratulations to the neighborhood as a whole, especially to the people who held it together and stayed during the bad times. Landmarking is a validation of the neighborhood’s worthiness as a place one can be proud to live in and raise a family. Sure, it’s not perfect, and we have a very long way to go, but this is a big first step.
This is excellent news. Hope it goes all the way through.
Now, then: Does anybody know the status of the proposed expansion of the landmarked area in Clinton Hill? I know there was a meeting a couple weeks ago, but I never saw any coverage of it. Anybody got a link? Thanks mucho, and congrats Crown Heights.
I didn’t find it patronizing and was glad they talked to both new and old residents, black and white. Would have liked to hear from the jewish population though and how they view this designation. Thrilled it’s happening though.
I hope (and am confident that) this designation will go through. However,am I the only one who found the Times article kind of patronizing–like much of their “outer borough” coverage?