Photo Courtesy of Alissa Fleck

By Alissa Fleck

When the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) first discovered that developer Stephan Boivin intended to raze the 1824 federal style house formerly belonging to Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, the group focused primarily on the house’s architectural merit. Boivin’s development group, Nordica, hoped to transform the house into apartments and retail space.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) responded to community advocates in favor of the building’s preservation by saying the house does not qualify as a landmark because it does not retain enough of its original material, though its general area in the neighborhood is still under consideration.

After this obstacle and further research, the GVSHP began to focus instead on the house’s rich history and ties to the LGBTQ community. As the group explained, the City has never before declared something a landmark based on the history of the gay and lesbian movement.

At a press conference outside the Spring Street house today, elected officials and community advocates came together to speak to this colorful history. Senator Tom Duane, the second openly gay member of the New York State legislature, appeared at the conference to make a statement, and Council Speaker Christine Quinn sent a letter in support.

Steve Ashkinazy, Stonewall Democratic Club executive committee member, said early leaders of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) formerly resided in the South Village home. The GAA group was the blueprint for the LGBT movement, he explained.

“Now they want to turn it into a mall,” said Ashkinazy. “The City says it does not retain enough of its original character…it’s clearly older than its surroundings. It’s visually and architecturally a standout with a story to tell.”

“The world has changed here and New York needs this landmark,” he added.

GVSHP Executive Director Andrew Berman said, of former residents with ties to the gay rights movement: “People who lived here touched others’ lives.”

He added, as an openly gay man who has worked under Senator Duane and is well-versed in the region and the struggles of civil rights groups, even “for [him], this house was a lesson.”

Laurence Frommer, a licensed NYC tour guide, said he, and others, have been reaching out to queer historians, hoping to bring the matter to national attention. While the midday turnout was a relatively small spattering, Frommer said he had been hoping for “a cast of thousands.”

“As somebody interested in chronicling and presenting LGBT history, this is important,” said Frommer. “It should be landmarked. There should be a plaque.”

“There’s so much in the City we don’t know about,” said Frommer. “How did it get lost?”

As for the civil rights angle, Frommer said he believes the City is trying presently to make up for a lack of African American historical representation, but they should be focusing on LGBTQ history also, and every other group as well. He said the City usually preserves landmarks based on architectural merit and less so cultural matters or history, but culture should be “considered a lot more.”

Kodak Coloramas — massive, panoramic photographs depicting idealized scenes of American life — were once championed as “the world’s largest photographs.” A single Colorama ad, measuring 18 feet high and 60 feet wide, dominated the east interior wall of the terminal’s main concourse.

Beginning July 28, visitors will be able to view scaled-down prints of the iconic images on display at the New York Transit Museum, located in the Gallery Annex of Grand Central Terminal. The Kodak Colorama exhibit includes 36 prints, which, at about two feet high and six feet wide each, are a mere fraction the size of the original images.

The advertisements ran continuously from 1950 to 1990, with Kodak boasting 565 different photographs over a 40-year period. Every three weeks, like clockwork, the company would undertake the expensive and laborious process of replacing the ad with a new image.

“The Colorama images were highly stylized ideas of American life that became part of the Grand Central experience for millions of visitors over a 40-year span,” said Gabrielle Shubert, director of the Transit Museum.

The campaign ended in 1990, when the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission declared Grand Central Terminal a landmark.

Many of the images, which portray idealized snapshots of 20th century American culture, are reminiscent of Norman Rockwell paintings; and not without reason. Rockwell — famous for his paintings and illustrations of everyday American life — served as an artistic director on some of the photo shoots for the Colorama campaign, according to Rob Del Bagno, manager of exhibits for the Transit Museum.

Although the ad campaign ran for four decades, the exhibit features only photographs from the 1960s.

“The curator felt that that decade was the heyday of Kodak — and the heyday of advertising,” Del Bagno said.

He added that the exhibit, which will run until November 1, marks one of many upcoming events and activities meant to honor the centennial of of Grand Central Terminal. The iconic New York transportation hub, which opened to railway traffic in 1913, will celebrate its 100th anniversary in February.

“As we prepare for our Centennial, the return of these images serves as a reminder of how Grand Central has been at the center of life and culture in New York and the Northeast for all these decades,” Shubert said.

Landmarking in downtown neighborhoods has surprising opposition from local churches

The city’s preservationists marched downtown last Tuesday to make their voices heard at a Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) hearing on the proposal to create an East Village and Lower East Side Historic District. Landowners, locals and political representatives flooded the ninth floor of City Hall almost to its limits to discuss and argue the LPC’s efforts to preserve the “rich cultural history” of these downtown Manhattan neighborhoods.

The initial plan includes 330 buildings, though 17 more might be added in a revised edition. If designated as an historic district, these buildings, mostly row houses and tenements, would become landmarked and would avoid destruction and alteration, purportedly preserving the area’s cultural significance. This designation, however, would also mean that renovation costs to these particular properties would increase as well.

Among the buildings are the historic Congregation Meseritz Synagogue on East 6th Street, the Max D. Raskin Center on East 6th Street, the Duo Multicultural Center on East 4th Street and the longest continuously running alehouse in New York City, McSorley’s, on East 7th Street.

The majority of those attending the hearing were in support of the plan.

The neighborhood “helps tell the story of immigrant life in 19th- and 20th-century Manhattan,” members of the LPC reported to slight applause from the large group of activists wearing bright “Preserve the East Village Landmark Now” stickers.

“These types of buildings, in the past, have sometimes been less appreciated than high-style architecture,” said one fervent supporter of the move. “However, they are equally as deserving of designation—especially in blocks like East 6th and East 7th Street, which remain meticulous and largely unaltered. We are also pleased to the see the wide variety of…cultural-related architecture.”

Among the supporters were the offices of State Sens. Tom Duane and Dan Squadron, Councilwoman Rosie Mendez and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and local committees like the Cooper Square Committee, the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, the Historic Districts Council, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and the East Village Community Coalition.

The plan is a “complement to the January designation of the East 10th Street historic district, the first East Village historic district established since the 1969 designation of the St. Mark’s historic district” said the first speaker, a representative for Rosie Mendez. “All three districts have fundamental preservation in common and will work in alliance to preserve the proud legacy of generations of immigrant families.”

Landmarking efforts began earlier this year when, on Jan. 12, the LPC approved a block-long designation on the south side of East 10th Street.

As expected, local clergy were the opposition’s loudest voices, saying their groups would be put under extreme financial strains if their buildings were landmarked.

“There are many examples of financial duress caused by landmark designation, including the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Transfiguration of Our Lord in Brooklyn,” a parish council member of the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection on East 2nd Street claimed.

“This designated landmark suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial loss during a protracted appeal process to replace their copper roof as a result of time wasted and a sudden increase in commodity costs…Landmark designation against the congregation’s will may represent the death knell of a historic congregation that has served the vulnerable.”

The religiously affiliated speakers cited the LPC as being unreasonable for treating nonprofit parishes the same as profitable establishments, and claimed that the designation transfers authority of cathedrals to civil authority, meaning civil government would dictate religious freedom, violating the First Amendment.

One member of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral went as far as calling the designation “a sin which you’ll be held accountable for.”
Many religious organizations requested that if the proposal is indeed passed, their respective cathedral be excluded from the designation.
The LPC declined to comment on the hearing and the effects it may have had on their deliberations, saying that they don’t usually comment during the process.

According to the LPC’s press office, an additional public hearing will be held on the designation, although the date of the hearing hasn’t been finalized.

By Nick Gallinelli

It was with amazement last week that I read a letter by the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY), the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, the New York Building Congress and other organizations to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), calling for the LPC to delay its long-awaited first vote on the proposed extensions to the Riverside-West End Historic District.

Despite a transparent, public process that spanned months, REBNY and its cohorts argued that the LPC’s process lacked sufficient notice and information for property owners. This bold statement came even though REBNY’s testimony at the first public hearing mentions LPC’s community meeting with property owners six months before its first hearing—a step taken to ensure that owners were made fully aware of the proposal and the nature of landmark designation as early in the process as possible.

Despite the public meeting, the hearings, the countless community meetings by preservation advocates and community organizations, numerous articles on the proposed district and even articles in REBNY’s own newsletter, owners allegedly still do not know what landmarking means or are unaware that they are included in the proposed district?

While these assertions are incredible, REBNY’s position at this juncture is anything but surprising. This is simply a last-ditch attempt to derail a critical designation that has been years in the making.

I certainly did not take the enormous amount of public testimony on both sides of the issue that I heard during each of the three hearings held by LPC last year on the proposed extensions as an indication that the owners did not have enough information or that insufficient notice about the hearings was given to allow everyone to weigh in with their opinions.

Notice about the proposed historic district and all of the meetings and hearings on the proposal has been given to every block in the proposed district more than enough times by LPC, local residents, news media, community groups and offices like mine. Demanding that the draft designation report, draft guidelines or other information be released before a vote is unnecessary; I find it extremely doubtful that any property owner concerned by his or her building’s inclusion in the proposed district has missed the deluge of information or could not find the maps of the proposed districts or regulations governing historic districts on LPC’s website.

Owners have had ample time to process the detailed information provided by LPC and more than ample opportunity to give their views. Numerous buildings opposed to being landmarked have asked to be carved out of the district, and owners throughout the district have testified both for and against the proposal.

The landmark designation process is the furthest thing from broken, and I hope to see the LPC approve the first historic district extension on June 26.

Linda Rosenthal is a state Assembly member who represents the Upper West Side.

The legal troubles began shortly after the Rose Group signed a 20-year lease with the church in 2006. The lease terms specify that the Rose Group pay $250,000 in annual rent as well as 10 percent of the profits from their events, in addition to making costly repairs and paying the building’s property taxes and utilities.

The event company originally obtained the permits to operate based on the legal premise of being an “accessory use” of the church, which has since been challenged, and the latest court decision decreed that the building no longer functions primarily as a church, a decision that some neighbors support but that church members find perplexing.

“It’s obvious those people have never visited us,” said Dora Redman, the clerk and treasurer at the church. “Our services still exist; we’ve never cancelled one.”

While their membership has dwindled over the years, Redman said they still hold Sunday services for around 50 members each week, in addition to Wednesday evening services, Bible study, lectures and conferences that bring crowds in the hundreds. She also confirmed the fact that the church simply cannot afford to operate and maintain the building—the Rose Group said they’ve made $6 million worth of repairs and upgrades to the church—without a revenue-generating tenant.

The characterization of the building as a church matters, because it would grant the Rose Group an exception to the ABC (alcoholic beverage control) law that prohibits the sale of liquor within 200 feet of a school or house of worship—in this case, the Central Presbyterian Church just a block north of 583 Park. Exceptions are given to houses of worship if they themselves sell alcohol as an “accessory use” of the building and the other establishments within 200 feet are doing the same thing and don’t object.

“We made it very clear [what we were doing], we brought it to the community board,” said Louis Rose, the owner of the Rose Group.

“We had the conditionally approved license, we made the deal with the church, we had permission from the buildings department,” said Rose. “We got all the permits, we started the work, we tore the whole place apart, the roof had been leaking for a long time, the cornices in the auditorium had been washed away and melted away from water damage. So we had scaffolding, we took everything apart, and the neighbors woke up about it.”

Rose said that the community first objected to 583 Park covering the name of the church during their events, a move that was demanded by the church and approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. From there, community opposition grew louder.

The Department of Buildings rescinded its permits, and the Rose Group sued the city and eventually won when the court found that the city was not treating the church in the same way as surrounding establishments. Meanwhile, however, the conditional liquor license was dependent on getting a certificate of occupancy that they did not have, and the SLA rescinded it.

In 2009, the Rose Group applied for another liquor license. Community Board 8 voted strongly against it, telling the SLA in their resolution that the Rose Group had failed to provide hours of operation and refused to limit the days of use or number of attendees per event, and that the board had heard substantial complaints of noise and traffic problems from neighbors of the largely residential area. A neighborhood organization called the Preservation Coalition formed to oppose the application, and when it was denied, the Rose Group went back to court.

The state Supreme Court decided in their favor, but the neighbors appealed and won, and the Court of Appeals declined to hear the case. Now the SLA will no longer grant single event licenses to 583 Park, which they had been using for years, and they cannot book new events.

For some neighbors, it’s a long-awaited victory. Phyllis Weisberg, the attorney for the Preservation Coalition, said her clients simply want to maintain their residential community and feel that the events at 583 Park are too disruptive.
“When you have 1,000 people arriving on one night at one location in a residential district, obviously it’s a serious problem,” Weisberg said. “The sidewalk is often blocked; people have to go into Park Avenue, into the street.”

Weisberg said that the group opposing 583 Park has involved several area co-op boards as well as individuals, but would not say who exactly composes the Coalition or pays its legal fees. Rose contends that the opposition is only a small minority and speculates that a real estate interest is behind it, a theory Weisberg rejected as “nonsense.”

The Rose Group points to their abundant security measures, efforts to curb traffic and noise—they only load and unload in specified zones on the side streets and limit the hours to the daytime—and few complaints to the 19th Precinct as proof they’ve been good neighbors. But others in the community say that’s not the whole story.

“We hear periodic complaints about the operations including noise and traffic, everything you would expect when a quiet church transforms into a catering facility,” said Council Member Dan Garodnick. “The events at the church are of a size and scale that are beyond any of their immediate neighbors.”

He said that he hasn’t heard from the Rose Group in the past few years, but that he had been involved in trying to broker a compromise early on.

“I spent some time, by the way, trying to explore whether there was a way for the community and the Rose Group to operate in harmony before this whole thing took off, but we did not reach any agreements,” Garodnick said.
Rose said they’ve been working with state elected officials and are open to compromise now, although they are still pushing and hoping for a full liquor license. State Sen. Liz Krueger declined to comment on the issue, but Assembly Member Dan Quart confirmed that he is willing to work with both sides of the dispute.

“If we are to play any role at all, it will be bringing sides together, if a resolution is possible,” Quart said. “My office has certainly been inundated by phone calls, emails and letters from advocates and interested parties on both sides.”
Indeed, the Rose Group has stacks of letters in support of their business enterprise. Rose said that’s because many of their upscale clients’ guest lists are drawn primarily from the community surrounding 583 Park. High-end events like Oscar de la Renta fashion shows and the star-studded Save Venice benefit attract both celebrities and wealthy Upper East Side residents.

“Even people who are against us come to the parties all the time,” said Rose. “It is a remarkable phenomenon.”
Rose said that they’ll apply for a beer and wine license, which has different criteria, if all else fails.

“Maybe 75 percent of our business is charities; they won’t mind the beer, wine, champagne bar. We would certainly survive. I think it would be difficult for weddings, bar mitzvahs, corporate events, holiday parties,” Rose said. “We believe that the building is beautiful; we do not need the liquor. But with that said, it will certainly make us less desirable of an operation.”

Looking north along Park Avenue at 79th Street.

Park Avenue may be one of the most recognizable stretches of real estate in the world, and some Upper East Side residents are clamoring to keep it that way. With the recent purchase of two adjoining pre-Civil War properties by a developer and rumors of demolition circling, preservation advocates are reviving a campaign they’ve been pushing for several years to designate a lengthy strip of Park Avenue as a protected landmark district.

“Like the Barbizon that was just designated, Park Avenue is one of these iconic places in New York that most people would assume is designated, and people are always shocked to find out that it is not designated in its entirety, at least the residential part of it,” said Tara Kelly, executive director of Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts.

Currently, only the southern portion of Park Avenue is included in the Upper East Side Historic District, from midway between East 61st and 62nd streets up to East 79th Street. Parts of the avenue fall within the Carnegie Hill Historic District, from the north side of East 91st Street to midway between East 93rd and 94th streets, but the stretch in between these areas and north of them remains largely unprotected by landmark designation.

The groups Carnegie Hill Neighbors, Defenders of the Historic Upper East Side and Historic Park Avenue have all joined forces in a campaign to convince the Landmarks Preservation Commission to consider protecting Park Avenue in its entirety from East 62nd to 96th streets, which could mean expanding the Carnegie Hill district as well as creating a new district in the East 80s.

“This is the second go-round,” said Teri Slater, a member of Defenders. “We’re having another meeting with the chair of the Landmarks Commission, because since we [last] spoke, three buildings have been torn down, and now two more buildings are threatened.”

The properties currently under threat of development are 1108 and 1110 Park Ave., which were recently purchased for $16 million and $16.5 million, respectively, by 89 Park Avenue LLC, a holding company connected to Philadelphia-based luxury development company Toll Brothers. The properties both come with air rights and little restrictions on what can be built there, and many assume that the company will construct one of its signature high-end condo towers; their building The Touraine on East 65th Street boasts one- to five-bedroom units, priced from $2.95 million to $20 million.

“They tell a different story of Park Avenue,” said Kelly of the recently purchased properties. “Most people think of these tall buildings that were developed in the teens and twenties, but prior to that [the neighborhood] was middle-class.” While Park Avenue is now a pricey destination, Kelly said, at one time the railroad running through the neighborhood deterred wealthy buyers, and that if some of the buildings from that era aren’t preserved, the history will be too easily forgotten.

“We’re very upset. We don’t know what to do,” Slater said. “It’s probably one of the most iconic boulevards in the world.”

Lo van der Valk, president of the Carnegie Hill Neighbors, has been working to garner support for the landmarking effort and to spread the word about what exactly is at stake.

“One of the strongest arguments for designation is that the buildings within and outside the historically designated portions of Park Avenue are similar in style, scale, and period of construction (centering in the 1920s), and are mostly designed by the same group of distinguished architects of major apartment buildings,” van der Valk wrote in the group’s most recent newsletter.

Representatives from the preservation groups will be meeting with the Landmarks Commission this week to urge them to calendar a hearing to consider designating the missing pieces of the famous street.

“There are a lot of people who think Park Avenue is worth saving, and that’s why we’re working on this the second time around,” said Slater. “I’ve never lived on Park Avenue, I’m never going to live on Park Avenue, I have no desire to live on Park Avenue—but I value it as one of New York City’s assets.”

“No final decision was made at the hearing,” said Lisi de Bourbon, a spokesperson for the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). “But the commissioners were favorably disposed toward the design, and they received the proposal well.”

The retail area in the South Street Seaport Historic District has a long history with New Yorkers. Twenty-seven years ago, Howard Hughes Corp. opened a large shopping mall opened on Pier 17. But despite hopes for the design’s ability to attract local shoppers and visiting tourists, they found it difficult to generate necessary profits, according to representatives at the meeting.

Now, the corporation, with SHoP Architects and the landscape design architecture firm James Corner Field Operations, wants to demolish the mall and replace it with a glass-covered building containing two 60,000-square-foot sales floors. The design is built around a “natural” plan, with wide, open-air spaces between shops and restaurants.

The company hopes to begin construction in 2013, with the pier opening in 2015.

According to LPC Chairman Bob Tierney, there is “support for the demolition…and for this design.”

In a prepared statement, Chris Curry, senior executive vice president of development for Howard Hughes, said the company’s design “balances the pier’s iconic waterfront location with its unique ability to provide a much-needed community hub for the rapidly growing residential population in Lower Manhattan.”

Nevertheless, concerns were raised at the meeting. These included fears that retail signage would block views of the Brooklyn Bridge and obstruct the glass façade of the proposed structure.

“The commission was actually concerned with the transparency of the new structure,” de Bourbon said. “The commission worried that the way the interior was arranged, and the design of the glass structure, would block the new building from sight.”

As it stands, another public meeting will have to take place before final decisions can be made, for which Howard Hughes and SHoP Architects will come up with an updated design. De Bourbon noted the meeting could take place within the next few months, and hoped the concerns would be addressed at that time.

De Bourbon said the commission wants “to get a clearer sense from [Howard Hughes] about their plans for dealing with these problems in future meetings with the Commission.”

Certain preservationists also expressed concerns. In a prepared statement, Jane Thompson of the Historic Districts Council, a preservation advocacy group, proposed that the mall at Pier 17 be renovated, not demolished and redesigned entirely. Thompson and her husband, Benjamin C. Thompson, took part in the original Pier 17 design in 1987.

Still, Tierney was supportive of the possibility of changes to Pier 17, saying that the Hughes Corporation’s plans signaled “an appropriate first step.”

By Courtney M. Holbrook

The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted Nov. 16 to give West End Avenue historic district a public hearing.

“Calendaring” a landmark proposal, which schedules a public meeting, is a crucial step toward full designation.

In September, the Landmark Preservation Commission released a draft of their plan to protect buildings on West End Avenue between West 70th Street and West 107th Street, from Broadway to Riverside Drive. That plan has been revised and expanded to cover 790 buildings in three existing landmark district extensions.

The district will be extensions of West End-Collegiate District, and Riverside-West End Historic District I and II.

The planned coverage area is much more than Richard Emery, who heads the West End Preservation Society, first anticipated.

“Originally, we were trying to be conservative,” Emery said, proposing to protect apartment buildings on the avenue. But Landmarks Preservation Commission’s plan will cover brownstones and townhouses as well.

“They obviously view the whole district as something necessary to preserve—the feeling of the community and the architecture on the Upper West Side,” Emery said.

Kate Wood, executive director of local preservation group Landmark West, said the new historic district will protect important, architecturally-distinct buildings.

The potentially landmarked buildings include First Baptist Church on West 79th and Broadway, the Broadway Fashion Building on West 84th Street and the Cliff Dwelling on Riverside Drive and West 96th Street.

Wood was pleased that the district will include parts of Broadway and Riverside Drive.

“It really does tell a comprehensive story of the neighborhood,” Wood said.

The Landmark Preservation Commission was scheduled to meet with West End Avenue property owners Wednesday, Sept. 15, about the designation of hundreds of buildings.

The meeting, which at press time was scheduled for 6 p.m. at P.S. 75, is an informal but crucial part of the landmark designation process. The meeting is to inform property owners of the added regulation that comes with landmark designation.

The year-old proposal would landmark 745 buildings on West End Avenue between West 70th Street and West 109th Street, including many side streets. “With a few exemptions, virtually everything is included,” said Richard Emery, the founder and president of a nonprofit West End Preservation Society. “This is a remarkable and far more ambitious landmarking than we have ever contemplated.”

The West End Preservation Society submitted the request to the Landmark Preservation Commission after a Columbia University professor, Andrew Dolkart, conducted a 260-page study of the avenue’s architecture.

“West End Avenue is the longest stretch of pre-war buildings that’s basically unbroken,” Emery said.

The commission is considering a plan that would extend existing Upper West Side landmark districts, according to Elisabeth de Bourbon, a commission spokesperson.

“Many of them would be extended to include the 745 buildings we believe are deserving of designation,” de Bourbon said.

The Upper West Side has seven historic districts, but only a few cover buildings on the avenue. The Riverside-West End Historic District is the largest, covering seven blocks of West End Avenue from West 87th Street to West 94th. The districts were created to preserve the distinct residential buildings constructed in the late-19th and early-20th century.

“The buildings that are worthy of designation are a natural extension of the existing districts,” de Bourbon said.

The West End Avenue proposal will officially move through the designation process next month, when the commission votes to schedule a public hearing.

Update:

The Landmark Preservation Commission released a draft of the proposed West End Avenue historic district expansion:

West End Avenu Study Areas _ALL_20100916

As the mega-development Riverside Center goes through the public review process, landmark advocates are worried about the future of the West 59th Street powerhouse.

The powerhouse, sitting just south of Riverside Center’s footprint, provided power to the city’s first subway system. This Beaux-Arts style structure, built in 1904, has long been on local preservationists’ wish list.

The Con Edison powerhouse, a Beaux-Arts style structure, has long been on local preservationists’ wish list.

But landmark advocates fear that Riverside Center’s design—as it stands now—would kill any chance of reusing the plant for public use, such as a museum or a market. The project has access points from West 60th and 61st streets and open space throughout the heart of the project. But West 59th Street has curb cuts for loading docks and the below-ground car servicing center.

“Those are things that have proven themselves to be life-deadening elements in the design,” said Kate Wood, executive director of Landmark West, a preservation group. “If that street feels like a service corridor… you’re creating a psychological barrier between the two developments.”

Preservationists are looking to the future when steam power becomes obsolete. Without a designation, preservationists worry that the powerhouse could be demolished or stripped of its architectural integrity. A designation would keep the detail and it could be used as a community space.

“It would be realistic if part of this environmental review thought about what this building could become and try to make sure there’s a dialogue between the two developments,” Wood said.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission held a hearing on the powerhouse in July 2009, but nothing has been scheduled since then.

The powerhouse, owned by Con Edison, supplies steam to customers, including the Museum of Natural History and the Empire State Building. Con Edison has been against a landmark designation because the energy giant would be saddled with extra regulation that they say will hamper operations.

“Con Edison plans to continue using the 59th Street station as a steam plant and the Extell developers have indicated they want to be a steam customer,” said Allan Drury, a Con Edison spokesperson, in a statement. “Regardless of what decision they make on that, we will continue to use the plant as a steam plant to supply customers.”

Extell backs Con Edison’s position on landmarking, a spokesperson for the developer said. As for the condition of West 59th Street, the spokesperson said the block will be “vastly improved” over its current condition. Extell’s plans include landscaping and making the block wider.

State Sen. Tom Duane, a supporter of designating the powerhouse as a landmark, believes Con Ed can fulfill its duty as a power station and keep the ornate details intact. But Duane noted the project can change during the public review process, even cutting one of the towers, Building 4, from the proposal, if Community Board 7 gets its wish.

“The street life of 59th Street is still something that has to be determined in negotiations between the community, Riverside Center and Con Edison,” Duane said. “[West] 59th Street brings them all together.”