March 4, 2003

Statement of the Historic Districts Council before the Landmarks Preservation Commission
Regarding the proposed NoHo East Historic District

The Historic Districts Council is the citywide advocate for New York’s historic neighborhoods. The designation of new historic districts is always a desired goal of HDC, and we are pleased to testify in favor of the proposed designation before the Landmarks Commission today. HDC has worked with the NoHo community and the Landmarks Commission for over 5 years to protect this fragile, heterogeneous area, and we see this designation as an important step in gaining protection against inappropriate development for the entire historic neighborhood.

NoHo is an evolving and unruly area, whose architecture comes from successive waves of development – from Federal row houses to early 20th-century commercial buildings – brought on by successive waves of populations and uses. From residential rowhouses to tenements to store and loft buildings to factories and even stables, NoHo has been a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood since before “zoning” was a widely-recognized term. The neighborhood continues to be home to a wide-range of people and buildings, all living in tight-knit community physically encompassed by streetwalls that in their heterogeneity possess a certain palette of materials and a distinct measurement of scale that creates a cozy sense of place that could be termed “early 20th-Century Metropolitan”. This neighborhood is still very much our great-grandparent’s New York – the streets where successive groups of new citizens came to chase their dreams of a better life in the beginning days of the American century, when New York City was recently born as a great urban metropolis. This district encompasses both the buildings built by New York’s vanished native gentry, and the institutions built to serve, house, and employ the new New Yorkers and HDC very much welcomes its physical diversity.

It should come as no surprise that HDC regards this current proposal as merely the second step in preserving the entire NoHo neighborhood. NoHo is beset by immense development pressures, and if all the new projects currently in contemplation were to be built without the proper attention paid to the existing historic neighborhood, this district now before the Landmarks Commission would swiftly become an isolated back-water rather than the proper gateway to historic NoHo. Without proper oversight, the area once known as NoHo 2 – which encompasses the area north of this district to Astor Place and Cooper Square – could become an odd “no-man’s land” of towering, characterless buildings that would form a barrier between the natural continuity of the historic neighborhoods of SoHo and the Lower East Side to the south, and the current NoHo district to the west and the St. Mark’s historic district to the northeast. We have only to look at Washington Square Village and Silver Towers to see the disruptive effects of unsympathetic development on historic neighborhoods. Although these complexes have their fans and perhaps some historic significance as developments, no one would dispute the basic fact that their presence forms an impassable barrier in the midst of what was once entirely the historic neighborhood of the South Village.

We should not use this development paradigm as a model for the future of NoHo. Instead, the Commission should act in concert with other city agencies to secure and protect NoHo’s historic scale and character, so that the neighborhood can continue to prosper and evolve as a living and working community.

The Historic Districts Council would like to take this opportunity to compliment the Landmarks Preservation Commission on its recent efforts to redress the inadequacies of previous district designations. In the recent actions in Tribeca South, and now in NoHo, the Landmarks Commission has revisited the boundaries of designated historic districts and worked to realign the protected areas with the reality of the existing historic neighborhoods. Moreover, in last year’s very-welcome designations in the Hamilton Heights-Sugar Hill neighborhood, the LPC has shown itself to be far-sighted and thoughtful in its deliberations on creating boundaries – taking into account the cultural and historical significance of the neighborhood as well as its architectural importance. This work is very much appreciated, and should be rightfully praised and encouraged. On behalf of the Historic Districts Council, thank you.

 

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