New York City Mayor McScrooge?

As you all know, I've spent much of this year attempting to help Susan Hefti of the 93rd Street Beautification Association to bring two projects to fruition: having her block renamed Marx Brothers Place (honoring where the extraordinary comedians grew up -- and where the building, despite developers wanting to fool with it, still stands), and having her stretch of the Carnegie Hill Historic District extended by precisely this block in order to equally honor the comics (she lives in the building).

Susan, who is even more of a tenacious if tender pitbull than I am, has been fighting the good fight all year and run up against what seems like good and bad -- or shall we say at this time of year, naughty and nice -- politicians. Were this Chicago, for heaven's sake, maybe we could just cough up some money to the Governor of Illinois, who I understand now goes by "Do not Blago, do not collect $250,000." But, indeed, we're not in Chicago, we're in New York City, where the Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has shown the most remarkable aptitude to use his leverage, even if he doesn't have power, to achieve ends that he deems important. Like, for example, shoving the legally enacted term limits aside and ramrodding it through the City Council like a virgin at a VHI1 video gangbang.

But when Hefti and the rest of her 93rd Street crew look for Bloomberg to spread a little holiday cheer their way -- to simply endorse the idea of a Marx Brothers Place -- this famously anti-preservationist billionaire mayor simply raises his prominent nose and extends a metaphorical middle finger.

The irony is that yesterday, two prominent politicians endorsed Susan's ideas.

The first was Scott Stringer, borough president of Manhattan, who no doubt would like to have the mayor's job one day and might even care to ask Mayor Bloomberg to take all his billions and shove them where the Bloomberg terminals don't shine. Here's Susan email blast on the subject:

We have just received a copy of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's wonderful letter requesting that the Chairman of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission CALENDAR our RFE which asks that the city extend the CHHD one block east to include historic Marx Brothers Place!

Wow ! What a great holiday gift for our block to receive the full support of Borough President Scott Stringer ! This really means a lot to us all !

As you know, our block has been under siege for quite some time now, and most residents feel as though our concerns have fallen on deaf ears. As support for this preservation campaign continues to grow, it helps us feel that, at least, some folks are listening....

Following that was a second email blast from Susan because State Senator Jose Serrano, whose district includes this area, has endorsed the idea of extending the Carnegie Hill Historic District as well, in a letter to Robert B. Tierney, chair of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Let's remember that Tierney is a man, appointed by Bloomberg, who, as the Gotham Gazette noted in its summary of a recent series of exposes by Robin Pogrebin of the Times (quoting The Clyde Fitch Report), may or may not be suitable for his position. (In my coverage, indeed, I suggested he may be corrupt.) Still, how nice to get Serrano on board:

December 23, 2008

Hon. Robert B. Tierney, Chair
Landmarks Preservation Commission
Municipal Building
1 Centre Street, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10007

I respectfully ask the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) to reconsider a
Request for Evaluation (RFE) submitted by the 93rd Street Beautification Association on September 5, 2008.

This RFE seeks to extend the Carnegie Hill Historic District one block east to include a collection of houses and gardens known as Marx Brothers Place, located on East 93rd Street between Lexington and Third Avenues.

At a time of great development in our city, I believe that preservation is a key to protecting our historical, cultural, and architectural treasures. This is not to mention the environmental benefits that come with less demolition and construction.

Marx Brothers Place, which falls within the confines of my State Senate District, is worthy of our attention, and worth of the protective umbrella of city government. I urge you to revisit the proposal, and calendar the item as soon as possible.

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any questions.

But here's the reason I'm writing this. Susan Hefti has had some less than nice correspondence of late with representatives of Mayor Bloomberg's office, and they have, I think, unduly, needlessly and shamelessly chastised her for daring to enlist the mayor's support of any of the 93rd Street Beautification Association's goals. That's just disgusting. The tone of the woman who wrote to Susan was just awful, unprofessional. The correspondence, which I am not at liberty to quote but may refer to, argues that the mayor has no jurisdiction in this matter and to leave him alone. As the Gotham Gazette wrote, "This administration is so excited about the new that it overlooks its obligation to protect the old."

But why protect Bloomberg?

Anyway, here is a final email blast on this that Susan sent out. I urge you all to follow through. It's amazing that when it serves the mayor's interest to subvert democracy in the crassest way, in a bitter betrayal of the public trust that makes him not a much better man than the double-dealing Blago, he'll do it. But when it comes to something so clearly, unquestionably toward the public good, Mayor McScrooge says "Bah, humbug" and hides in his East 79th Street mansion. And to think that Bloomberg's elderly mother is alive to see what a monster her son has become.

Please consider lending your support.

With 8 days of Chanukah and 12 days of Christmas, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has oceans of time to grant our holiday wish for Marx Brothers Place!

Why, it didn't even take him that long to get NYC's term limits law changed !!!

Please help us inspire the Mayor to use his considerable influence over the City Council - to honor the legacy of the world's greatest comic geniuses & NYC's cultural history by clicking on this link and cutting & pasting & sending a message to: ljackson@cityhall.nyc.gov (with a copy to: garodnickoffice@gmail.com and 93rdst.beautification@gmail.com)

Please make sure the Subject Line of your email reads: Marx Brothers Place!

Or just call the Mayor @ 212.788.2958 or 212.788.3245 and ask him to grant this simple holiday wish for Marx Brothers Place!

And while we're at it, please don't forget to click on this link so that YOU can sign the petition to co-name the block Marx Brothers Place!

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Will Mayor Bloomberg Play the Scrooge? Or Make Marx Brothers Place a Reality?

Susan Hefti of the 93rd Street Beautification Association, in an e-blast to her growing, increasingly vocal constituency, has a message for Mayor Bloomberg. The question is whether, by spending not one dollar, he will listen. Mr. Mayor, hello? Is there a good reason NOT to proclaim Marx Brothers Place? Here, read the email from Susan -- and you decide.

NYC's Mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, has long been known for his generous largess—saving, for example, a struggling ballet school uptown, much to the delight and surprise of the very grateful recipient of his unexpected gift. Acts of kindness and good will, like this one, have loaned a certain charm to the Mayor's reputation over the years.

But, in the wake of the Mayor's recent and notorious end run around two voter referenda on term limits, his reputation has, according to polls on the subject, taken a real beating.

So as acts of generosity and kindness always seem to take on a special glow during the holidays, offering as they do hope for the human spirit, we have a very simple suggestion of a Mayoral gesture that might help to smooth out some of the dings left behind by the bitterly contested Council vote, and this gesture won't cost the Mayor a dime!

One of the many perks of being Mayor of this great city is that the office carries with it the authority to ceremonially co-name streets throughout the five boroughs. Mayor Koch made good use of this official gesture when he co-named a block on 91st Street James Cagney Place in honor of the late great actor whose childhood home once stood there, but which was sadly demolished before Koch had a chance to bestow the honor.

As many of you know, we have been campaigning to have East 93rd Street, between Lexington & Third Avenues, the site of the beloved childhood home of the Marx Brothers, to be eponymously co-named Marx Brothers Place in honor of NYC's greatest gift to the world stage of comedy. It was actually the celebrated preservationist, Tony C. Wood, who first came up with the name Marx Brothers Place, and what a great idea it was!

So we hope that Mayor Bloomberg is feeling magnanimous this holiday season, and will grant this glorious, but cost-effective, holiday wish. A Mayoral gesture, as fine and grand as this, would be especially appreciated by neighborhood businesses who, during this economic downturn, will be the grateful beneficiaries of the foot traffic associated with becoming a true destination, especially one invested with so much good cheer.

For the Mayor's part, it would require no more than waving his magic wand to make the ceremonial name "official". Why the Mayor wouldn't even have to make the long, hard trek up our famously steep hill to deliver this particular holiday gift. He could simply announce, from the comfort of his warm office, that the deed has been done.

No environmentally unfriendly gift wrap is needed; no fancy ribbon; no squeezing down a chimney to place the ceremonial name under a tree. Simply say it is so, and it becomes Marx Brothers Place. It's just that easy.

Given the amount of good will this simple gesture would generate, and how little it would cost, its a real bargain for the city, the block and the Mayor. Everybody wins!

And talk about a bang for your buck! In one fell swoop, the Mayor would be supporting the neighborhood; local businesses; local real estate; tourism; NYC's much vaunted history; our city's cultural heritage & public identity and the unrivaled legacy of the universally recognized grandfathers of American comedy.

While some may still be harboring visions of sugarplums, we think the Mayor co-naming East 93rd Street for the greatest comic geniuses the world has ever known would simply be the sweetest holiday treat of all!

So perhaps you could all take just a moment out of your busy days to call the mayor's office at 212.788.2958 or 212.788.3245 or simply send him a cut & paste email at: ljackson@cityhall.nyc.gov (with a copy to 93rdst.beautification@gmail.com) and drop a really big hint about a very smart gift the Mayor could bestow upon historic East 93rd Street this holiday season, a gift New Yorkers would surely embrace and enjoy for generations to come.

Thanks for your continued interest in historic Marx Brothers Place!

For more information about the 93rd Street Beautification Association, please contact us at 93rdst.beautification@gmail.com or 212.969.8138 or visit our blogs at: Save Marx Brothers Place or The Marx Brothers Place Report or view our MySpace profile.

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Gothamist: Scumbag Landlords Forcing Love Saves the Day from the East Village

Just a personal story: spring (I think) of 1985. It was me, the lovely and ultra-hip Jo-Ellen Pryor, the equally ultra-punk Irit Lockspeiser and, I think, Jo-Ellen's ever-fashionable friend Fawn Roth, all of us of Jamaica High School, coming into "the city" -- what us Queens kids called Manhattan -- and heading directly for Greenwich Village, where we danced with the Hare Krishnas in Washington Square Park (no, I'm not joking) and shopped madly at Love Saves the Day, which is being forced out of its home on 2nd Avenue and 7th Street by, according to Gothamist, a "scumbag landlord."

All right, fair is fair: the "scumbag landlord" phrase is in the comments section of the post, not the post itself. Still, I wanted to draw attention to this terrible development. I bought an Andy Gibb bubblegum pack at Love Saves the Day on that day in 1985. I chewed it just a few years ago. I'm speechless. Why is my New York dying?

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Robin Pogrebin of the Times, in Third Article of a Series, Piles On LPC Chair Robert Tierney

I am growing increasingly astonished at the breadth of reporting and sheer writing craft exhibited by New York Times reporter Robin Pogrebin in her series of pieces on the state of landmarking in New York City, specifically the work (or lack of, if you will) of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

In Pogrebin's first story, "An Opaque and Lengthy Road to Landmark Status," the writer essentially dissects the Landmarks Preservation Commission's work -- or lack of work or efficiency, it would seem -- and lays a fair amount of the blame at the shuffling feet of LPC chair Robert B. Tierney, who has been keeping his chair lukewarm, Pogrebin writes, for five years. The article further tries to get to the root of what seem like extreme lassitude and laissez-faire-ness on Tierney's part, and how the cause of the preservation is being undermined in a widespread and thoroughly alarming way. In this first story (which I didn't realize was going to be part of a series at the time), I was particularly gobsmacked by this:

He’s a guy who’s had no demonstrable interest in historic preservation, who has the most important preservation job in New York City,” said Anthony C. Wood, author of “Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect a City’s Landmarks" (Routledge, 2008), and a party to the suit.

In Pogrebin's second story, "Preservationists See Bulldozers Charging Through a Loophole," the story goes on -- it's all about how the sluggishness and ineffectualism of the LPC and Tierney act as permission slips for developers, who generally have the moral fiber of Gregory Rasputin, to demolish and cut corners and do all sorts of terrible things to our urban environment. Here is another particularly moving quote:

“In the middle of the night I’m out there at 2 in the morning, and they’re taking the cornices off,” said Gale Brewer, a city councilwoman who represents that part of the Upper West Side. “We’re calling the Buildings Department, we’re calling Landmarks. You get so beaten down by all of this. The developers know they can get away with that.”

Now comes Pogrebin's latest piece: "Preserving the City: Church and State," which deals with the LPC's effect on the demolition (or preservation) of religious structures. (Interestingly, this is an area I'm not sure quite what I think yet: Does the cause of preservation supercede the right to religious freedom? I think it may not.) Here's a great quote:

Among the religious buildings designated on his watch, Mr. Tierney noted, were the first Catholic churches to become landmarks in 28 years: St. Aloysius on West 132nd Street, known for its ornamental polychrome bands of brick and terra cotta, and the Church of All Saints on East 129th Street, an imposing Gothic Revival masterpiece with wheel clerestory windows. Both won landmark status last year.

But while preservationists applauded those designations, they said the commission bypassed even more important treasures like St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Harlem, completed in 1907 on West 118th Street near St. Nicholas Avenue. Known for its flamboyantly ornate neo-Gothic facade, fan-vaulted ceiling, spiky pinnacles and stained-glass windows, it was cited as one of the seven most important sites worth saving by the Preservation League of New York State.

"My community loves this church," Representative Charles B. Rangel wrote in a 2004 letter to Cardinal Edward M. Egan.

During years of pressure from Harlem advocates, the commission has declined to hold a hearing on St. Thomas, saying the building had already been significantly altered and its congregation was largely inactive.

Some preservationists and architectural historians accuse the commission and the New York archdiocese of grudgingly going along with the designations of All Saints and St. Aloysius in exchange for the omission of St. Thomas.

“This was their bargain,” said Michael Henry Adams, the author of “Harlem: Lost and Found” (Monacelli Press, 2001), a history of the neighborhood’s architecture. “To me it’s like the decision of Solomon.”

Read all three articles and answer this question: Should Tierney resign?

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Will Robert B. Tierney, Chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Exposed in the New York Times, Resign?

New York Times reporter Robin Pogrebin is back today with a powerful follow-up to her earlier piece that exposes how the painful, inexplicable and unforgivably slow pace of the work of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission is damaging, often irrevocably, the cause of historic preservation in our precious, ever-threatened Gotham.

This new article, called "Preservationists See Bulldozers Charging Through a Loophole," is all about what happens as a result of the egregious, arguably immoral lassitude of LPC Chairman Robert B. Tierney -- who author Anthony C. Wood has called "a guy who’s had no demonstrable interest in historic preservation, who has the most important preservation job in New York City.” What happens? Here's what happens, according to Pogrebin:

Hours before the sun came up on a cool October morning in 2006, people living near the Dakota Stables on the Upper West Side were suddenly awakened by the sound of a jackhammer.

Soon word spread that a demolition crew was hacking away at the brick cornices of the stables, an 1894 Romanesque Revival building, on Amsterdam Avenue at 77th Street, that once housed horses and carriages but had long served as a parking garage.

In just four days the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was to hold a public hearing on pleas dating back 20 years to designate the low-rise building, with its round-arched windows and serpentine ornamentation, as a historic landmark.

But once the building’s distinctive features had been erased, the battle was lost. The commission went ahead with its hearing, but ultimately decided not to designate the structure because it had been irreparably changed. Today a 16-story luxury condominium designed by Robert A. M. Stern is rising on the site: the Related Companies is asking from $765,000 for a studio to $7 million or more for a five-bedroom unit in the building.

This is obviously outrageous, and Pogrebin provides multiple examples of how Tierney's evident, if well camoflaged, hostility to the cause of preservation is creating a culture of sneaking and lying and deceit and, for all we know, double-dealing. That Robert A. M. Stern, of all people, is participating in this rape of the New York City I love leaves me speechless. Can it be that Robert A. M. Stern is an ememy of all that is good in America?

And what are we going to go about this problem of the LPC's ineffectuality causing the systematic destruction of designation-worthy structures in New York City. Should Tierney, for example, admit to his ineptitude -- and his careless attitude toward the idea of preservation -- and step down? You'd think that such an emperor, devoid of clothes, might do so. But only if we protest.

To be fair, it's not as if Tierney does not present a vigorous defense:

“In the middle of the night I’m out there at 2 in the morning, and they’re taking the cornices off,” said Gale Brewer, a city councilwoman who represents that part of the Upper West Side. “We’re calling the Buildings Department, we’re calling Landmarks. You get so beaten down by all of this. The developers know they can get away with that.”

The number of pre-emptive demolitions across the city may be relatively small, but preservationists say the phenomenon is only one sign of problems with the city’s mechanism for protecting historic buildings.

“This administration is so excited about the new that it overlooks its obligation to protect the old,” said Anthony C. Wood, author of “Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect a City’s Landmarks.”

In an interview Robert B. Tierney, chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, called end-run alterations and demolitions “a terrible situation and a complete misuse of the process.”

He added that the commission was trying to address the issue. Before putting a property on the calendar for landmark consideration, for example, Mr. Tierney or the commission’s staff members meet with owners to explain the potential benefits of landmark designation —a federal tax credit for repairs or improvements, for example — in the hope of enlisting cooperation or even support.

“Owner consent is not required, but I strongly try to obtain it whenever possible,” Mr. Tierney said. “It helps the process going forward. It’s not a continually contentious relationship.”

But one must wonder just how vigorous Tierney is in his approach -- and take note of how Stern, whose work I absolutely worship, tries to wiggle out of responsibility for the unnecessary end to a sterling building:

In the case of Dakota Stables, some preservationists have accused the landmarks commission of deliberately dragging its heels. “The commission had no intention of designating Dakota Stables,” said Kate Wood, the executive director of Landmark West!, a preservation group. “They waited until it had been torn down. It was clearly too late for them to do anything meaningful.”

“It was all so carefully orchestrated,” she added. “It was politics. It was all just theater.”

But Mr. Tierney said he fought genuinely hard to have the case heard. “It was knock-down, drag-out time trying to do everything we could do to have a fair and open hearing on that building,” he said.

He also said he was “extremely unhappy with how the owners proceeded” on Dakota Stables and on Paterson Silks, yet added, “That’s two out of thousands — not to minimize them.”

Mr. Stern, the architect who designed the Harrison, the luxury condominiums replacing Dakota Stables, said the late-night demolition created “a controversial and awkward moment,” adding, “I don’t like to tear anything down if I don’t have to.”

And so I ask again: Should Chairman Tierney resign? And if not, what can he be doing faster and better? And how do we hold him to it?

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New York Times Runs Expose on Landmarks Preservation Commission: Should Chairman Tierney Resign?

There is a great story in today's Times -- by one of its most dogged and thorough arts reporters, Robin Pogrebin -- on the maddeningly slow pace of the New York City Landmarks Commission's work. Anyone who has had anything remotely to do with preservationism in this town knows what this article is all about. It's tight and smart -- and it makes you wonder what next year's mayoral election is going to look like.

(I know, I know: no one is going to vote for or against Mayor Bloomberg on the basis on what his political appointee, commission head Robert B. Tierney, has or hasn't been doing during his five years as the chair of the LPC. But if you look at the news landscape lately, there have been a lot more articles focusing on city government, such as the pieces last week on how Bloomberg said the city couldn't afford the $400 rebates for homeowners and the City Council forced his people to admit that the mayor didn't have the legal authority to withhold their distribution.)

The question, meanwhile, as a result of Pogrebin's piece is whether Chairman Tierney should step down.

Highlights of the article:

A six-month examination of the commission’s operations by The New York Times reveals an overtaxed agency that has taken years to act on some proposed designations, even as soaring development pressures put historic buildings at risk. Its decision-making is often opaque, and its record-keeping on landmark-designation requests is so spotty that staff members are uncertain how many it rejects in a given year.

In dozens of interviews, residents who have proposed historic buildings or districts for consideration said they were often stonewalled by the commission, receiving formulaic responses or sometimes no response at all.

And there's this:

On some occasions the commission has taken so long to act that the building in question has been demolished or irretrievably altered.

And there's this:

“He’s a guy who’s had no demonstrable interest in historic preservation, who has the most important preservation job in New York City,” said Anthony C. Wood, author of “Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect a City’s Landmarks" (Routledge, 2008), and a party to the suit.

Also troubling to critics is the fact that the commission does not document the resolution of each nomination or even quantify how many it defers or rejects. Asked how many Requests for Evaluation they received in the last fiscal year, commission officials said they fielded roughly 200 in addition to nominations generated by the agency itself and its neighborhood surveys. They add that about one quarter never reach the commissioners (other than Mr. Tierney).

It's a great read. Let's hope for change. Yes we can.

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The Landmarks Preservation Commission Finally Explains Its Indifference to NYU's Raping of the Provincetown Playhouse

Some time ago I wrote to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, asking why it has expressed no interest, no concern and, I guess, no awareness of the impending rape and destruction of the Provincetown Playhouse by President John Sexton of New York University and his right-hand gal, the raging anti-preservationist Alicia Hurley. This is the response I received. The line about
"leaving no historic fabric extant associated with the building's use as the Provincetown Playhouse" is clearly a lie. So the question remains whether the members of the Commission have been bought off in some way by NYU.

It also makes wonder whether local preservationists, such as Andrew Berman at the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, made the best case they could on this issue to other city agencies and elected officials.

Here's the letter in its entirety:

Mr. Jacobs,

In response to your inquiry concerning the Provincetown Playhouse & Apartments, please be advised that the property was not recommended to the full Commission for further consideration as an individual New York City Landmark due to its current condition and architectural integrity. Upon careful review by a senior staff committee of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the property was found to be too significantly altered leaving no historic fabric extant associated with the building's use as the Provincetown Playhouse.

Although we know this is not the response you wished to receive, we are sure you understand that in a city the size of New York, the committee must be extremely selective in the structures it proposes for landmark designation. We hope that your interest in the work of the Landmarks Preservation Commission continues.

Sincerely,

Emily Rich
Public Information Officer
Landmarks Preservation Commission
One Centre Street, 9th Floor North
New York, NY 10007
Ph: 212-669-7817
Fax: 212-669-3844

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The Times Finds West Village Theatres Threatened; GVSHP Responds Belatedly

I was as taken aback as anyone this morning when I read the Times story headlined "Village Nonprofit Groups Say They Are Surprised by a Steep Rise in Rents." Who knew? Of course, the more I read Dan Levin's reportage, the angrier I became -- although at who, precisely, I became increasingly unsure. For one thing, Levin's reporting of the other side of the story -- the part in which Rockrose, the giant real estate conglomerate that is going to raise the rents of the Wings Theater and various and sundry small nonprofit through the roof for the express purpose of destroying them and contributing to the overcommercializatin of the West Village -- was, it seemed to me, a little bit thin. The story, by my count, is 959 words. Here is what Levin included as a quote from the Rockrose ruinators:

Patricia Dunphy, a vice president of Rockrose, said the nonprofit organizations knew an increase was coming because they were warned that their rents would be raised once the leases expired. “This was not a big surprise,” she said.

That's 38 words. Did Levin cross-examine Dunphy about anything else having to do with the story -- to respond, for example, to Jeffrey Horowitz, the founder of Theater for a New Audience who said that there "was no warning" about rent-raising and that Rockrose is "doing this in a way that is frankly brutal"? Well, sure, I suppose we can infer that's how Dunphy's comment came about -- but Horowitz is using strong language and Levin's reporting is letting Dunphy get away with a shrug. (Here's a link to a Queens Crap blogpost that illustrates just how brutal Rockrose can be -- bullying people out of their homes.)

Nor does Levin specifically ask Dunphy to respond to these three paragraphs:

Local elected officials have become involved in the dispute, hoping to find a way to allow the nonprofits to keep their spaces. The community board is pressuring the Empire State Development Corporation, which owns the property, to work out a compromise.

“These not-for-profits perform a lot of important services, and now they’re being priced out of the neighborhood they helped found,” said Brad Hoylman, the chairman of Community Board 2, which covers the area.

The development corporation and the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, have said they are meeting with both sides to find a solution. But it is unclear how much state officials can do, because Rockrose signed a 99-year lease with the state on the building in 1982, making the company the effective landlord.

Well, for example, what city-subsidized tax breaks does Rockrose receive -- or has received in the past? Did Levin ask Dunphy that question? Did Dunphy ask Quinn? I mean, he writes that it is "unclear how much state officials can do" (I thought Quinn and Hoylman were locals), but it is apparently that no one ever asks city officials whether there might be punishments for Rockrose down the road if it goes ahead and destroys these worthy nonprofits.

I mention GVSHP (Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation) in this post because I received this evening, right on time, an email from Andrew Berman, the organization's executive director. I'm not challenging GVSHP's right to raise the red flag on this -- and God knows the last time I used Andrew's name in a post, much less referred to his political ambitions, which are very well known in city circles -- I was summarily dressed down via email.

Anyway, here is the email that GVSHP sent out:

In recent years, a super-heated real-estate market has helped force out some of the most venerable theaters in Greenwich Village. GVSHP has been greatly disturbed by this trend, and has worked with preservationists, theater advocates, and elected officials to try to prevent the loss of individual theaters. We have also reached out to the City for assistance in addressing this ongoing problem.

Four more theaters in Greenwich Village, located in the Archives Building at Christopher and Greenwich Streets, are now threatened with the loss of their space as well (see the article in today's New York Times). When the Archives Building was converted by the Federal Government to residential use 20 years ago, a condition of that agreement was that some of the space in the building would go to non-profit groups at affordable rents. Now, that original agreement is expiring.

Small theaters are vital to Greenwich Village and New York City -- they add to the cultural vitality and dynamism of our city and our neighborhood, they are engines of economic development, tourism, and education, and they are an essential part of our history and character.

GVSHP has written to Mayor Bloomberg once again asking that he work with us and other concerned groups and individuals to help prevent the loss of theaters from the Village, their historic home.

HOW TO HELP:
Please write to Mayor Bloomberg, urging that the City help us to keep theaters in the Village --go to www.gvshp.org/VillageTheatersLtr.htm for a sample letter you can use.

Now, I support this, but for writing to the Mayor? Really? What does anyone expect the Mayor to do? To call Rockrose and stop them? To slap them on the wrist and say, "Now, silly, you leave those nice nonprofit theatres alone"? Wouldn't it make more sense to make life miserable for Rockrose directly? For example, here's Rockrose's website.

And you can call Patricia Dunphy at 212-375-1155. Register your outrage directly. After all, it is not that the Mayor doesn't care -- he's spent millions, after all, furnishing nonprofit arts groups across the city with his largesse, generally anonymously -- but he's just not the way to proceed with this. Perhaps the problem is that the righteous leaders of advocacy groups have to play nice with real estate interests in the event that they actually acquire electoral power.

In the meantime, kiss those four theatres -- and the other nonprofit groups -- goodbye. I love New York.

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A New Preservation Blog is Born

I was unaware of a very interesting website called PreservationDirectory.com until a few minutes ago, nor was I aware of its various blogs until about 30 seconds ago. But wow! Terrific stuff, especially for a preservation freak like me.

On the left is the Liberty Theatre in, of all unlikely places, Astoria, Oregon. The website has a gallery of beautiful (and beautifully restored and preserved) theatres, some of which could as easily sit in NYC or London.

Just stunning.

For those interested, the League of Historic American Theatres 31st Annual Conference, being held in Boston this year.

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