Vol. 12 No. 3 Summer 2021 |
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| | Preservation Updates: Fighting the Madness |
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| 250 Water Street Tower
After the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission approved this terrible
proposal for a 300 foot tall tower within the low scale South Street
Seaport Historic District, on September 1 LESPI testified again in
opposition to the proposal, this time at the NY City Planning Commission hearing, which needs to approve the transfer of development rights necessary to build to this height.
The proposal requires a convoluted transfer of development rights from
Pier 17, more than two blocks away, which is not typically permitted by
zoning regulations. In exchange for this transfer there's supposed to be
substantial funding provided to the South Street Seaport Museum.
Basically everyone involved in this issue supports helping the Museum.
However, it's beyond us how anyone can consider that a 25 story building
is appropriate to a historic district defined by 4- and 5-story 19th
century commercial buildings. In our view, as well in the view of
Community Board 1 and dozens of other organizations and individuals,
this tower would not only be detrimental to the surrounding historic
district, but would set a terrible precedent where transfer of
development rights can be manipulated to allow enormous buildings in
historic districts throughout NYC. Currently, the City is waiting to see
if complications over the Museum's financing get resolved before
moving ahead. You can read LESPI’s 250 Water Street City Planning Commission testimony HERE. Proposed SoHo/NoHo Upzoning
This summer, the City Administration’s plan to upzone SoHo and NoHo
- which includes portions of Chinatown and the East Village
- has been marching through the regulatory review process. If
passed, the upzoning will result in buildings constructed up to 2-1/2
times the current allowed size, accelerate the loss
of the current affordable housing stock and mom-and-pop
stores, and encourage more gentrification and big box chain retail.
The upzoning will endanger both the SoHo-Cast Iron and NoHo Historic
Districts, and serve as a terrible precedent for upzoning other historic
districts around the City.
LESPI, along with numerous groups and individuals, testified against
this awful plan at Community Board 2’s July hearing, Manhattan Borough
President Brewer’s August hearing and again at the City Planning Commission hearing
at the beginning of September. Most of the testimony was passionately
opposed to the upzoning. CB2 voted resolutely against the plan, and MBP
Brewer has asked the City to work on improving it. You can read LESPI’s
testimony on the proposed rezoning HERE. We’ll keep you posted. |
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| | Proposed Community Board Resolution for Human Scale Zoning and Historic Preservation
In the face of the City’s relentless push to upzone our neighborhoods,
demolish our cherished historic buildings, and cater to the real estate
industry, LESPI worked with Community Board 3’s Landmarks Committee
earlier this month to pass a proposed resolution calling on the City to
re-prioritize neighborhood residents, mom-and-pop businesses, human
scale zoning and historic preservation. The resolution is based on a
similar resolution passed by Community Board 1, and we’re looking for
other community boards to pass similar resolutions. The proposal is
scheduled to go for a vote by the CB3 Full Board on September 28. East River Park Track House and Tennis Center
After LESPI submitted our comments last May to the City's East Side
Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) project team objecting to the planned
demolition of the East River Park’s Art Deco style Track House and
Tennis Center Comfort Station, we recently became aware that this summer
the City had produced two preliminary reports outlining the
ramifications of rehabilitating rather than demolishing these two
important historic structures.
Because the NY State Historic Preservation has determined that the two
buildings are eligible for the State and National Registers of Historic
Places, the City is supposed to make every reasonable effort to preserve
them. So we were happy to see that, finally, the City had made at least
some effort to consider preservation as an option. However, the reports
did not appear to be at all objective, making several inaccurate claims
to show that rehabilitation/restoration is not a feasible option. LESPI
has provided the City written objections to the reports' contents, and
called on the ESCR team to retain an independent consultant to
produce an objective feasibility study on the cost and scheduling
ramifications of restoration versus demolition. We’ll keep you posted. |
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| LESPI EVENTS: GOING STRONG |
| | Upcoming Events
Mark your calendars: October is LGBT History Month, so be sure to join
us on Tuesday, October 17, for what promises to be a fascinating webinar
by the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project on Lower East Side historic
sites connected to LGBT history. Keep an eye out for our email, Facebook
and Twitter announcements for this virtual Zoom event.
We’re also planning a virtual walking tour of the historic core of
Chinatown, tentatively for early October. Don’t miss what promises to be
a wonderful, informative experience - we'll let you know as soon as the
date is finalized. Back to our Neighborhood Street Fairs
On hiatus since the start of the pandemic, LESPI’s outdoor tabling and
petitioning has finally resumed, first at the Kehila Kedosha Janina
Greek Jewish Block Party in August, and then at the Block Festival on
10th Street earlier this month. We gathered almost 200 petition
signatures in favor of preserving the Lower East Side, now totaling
close to 3,000. As always, we had a great time chatting with
numerous passersby, and enjoying the festivals’ great music and
food. We want to thank Kehila Kedosha Janina for their generous donation related to the event. |
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| | Join LESPI’s Webinars and General Meetings
LESPI's General Meetings this summer included one in June on
Greek Independence and the Lower East Side, and one in September on
the Historic Settlement Houses of the Lower East Side, presented by
LESPI Board Members Marcia Haddad Ikonomopoulos and Deborah Wye,
respectively.
The Greek Independence talk compared and contrasted U.S. independence
in the late 18th century with Greek independence in the early 19th
century, and its effect on the Lower East Side, particularly the Kehila
Kedosha Janina synagogue congregation. The Settlement House
presentation, which focussed on the Educational Alliance, University
Settlement, and former Grand Street Settlement, discussed the many
services these organizations have provided to the LES community for over
a century, their buildings’ wonderful architecture, and LESPI’s efforts
to have the buildings protected with NYC Individual Landmark
designation. This meeting included updates on various LESPI initiatives,
such as our campaigns to landmark new NYC historic districts and
individual historic buildings in the LES. Keep your eyes open for future
General Meetings, we’ll notify you by email - you can sign up HERE.
Curious about LESPI’s past webinar events you may have missed? You can
watch our webinars on an assortment of topics related to Lower East Side
history on LESPI's YouTube Channel.
These include “90 Years of Terra Cotta on the Lower East Side
(1849-1939),” “Greek Independence and the Lower East Side,” “The
Construction of Grace Church in New York: A History through Documents,”
and “Jarmulowsky Bank Building: The Resurrection of a Lower East Side
Landmark,” among several earlier LESPI webinars. |
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| Who We Are: LESPI Board Profiles |
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Too often, the public thinks of volunteer preservation organizations as
mysterious entities with lives of their own. But they’re actually
conglomerations of individuals. For this reason, we want to
introduce you to our Board of Directors. Each LESPI quarterly newsletter
highlights one of our Board members. For our SUMMER 2021 newsletter, we
are highlighting Merica May Jensen, a member of our Board of Directors
since Summer 2021. Merica May is a licensed architect and artist practicing in New York City. She recently launched a new design studio obj after
working for 10+ years with Diller Scofidio and Renfro (DS+R), where she
was the lead architect for the 250’ Park Union Bridge in Colorado
Springs. Merica May also led and helped build a range of cultural and
institutional projects and competitions, including the US Olympic
Museum, and an event space at the Shed in NYC.
Merica May is dedicated to her architecture practice, art, research,
teaching and community. Building on her hybrid past as a former dancer
with Atlanta Ballet, she is interested in the physical/virtual
experience of bodies in space and the role of architecture as social
agent: her art/research projects include urban interventions,
interactive musical and photography instruments/environments, and
choreography. Merica May's new studio, obj, combines art
and design processes to engage critically with the built and
experienced environment. Their projects around gender equity,
climate change, affordable housing, and race have offered them
opportunities envision an elevated future. They recently completed a
shattered-glass-ceiling art installation around the Fearless Girl
sculpture for International Women’s Day, built a climate-education
installation on the Brooklyn waterfront, and won a design competition to
develop affordable housing for New York City. obj is
also dedicated to extending the service of architecture: they are
working pro bono with Sisters with Purpose to renovate an abandoned
church into a food bank and community space, worked with Theater 80 in
the East Village to renovate their seating arrangements for COVID, and
assisted LESPI with looking at how to save the historic East River
Park comfort stations.
In addition to serving on LESPI, Merica May works with
city-activist-art-space citygroup (curating shows, community
events, and artist debates), and serves on the board of the cultural
arts center and artist residency Kaatsbaan in Tivoli, NY. She also
teaches at the City College of New York and at Pratt Institute. At Pratt
she runs a research seminar studying the culture ecology of the East
Village. She
is excited to join LESPI's board because it is an organization fighting
for improving the lives of New Yorkers through activism, architecture,
and urbanism. |
| | Book Review: The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 1870-1914 by Moses Rischin |
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The iconic period of Jewish immigrant settlement on the Lower East
Side, spanning the late nineteenth century and early decades of the
twentieth century, has been memorialized in numerous books, articles and
lectures. An excellent source for insight into this immigrant period is
"The Promised Land," by Moses Rischin.
Rischin sets the scene by contrasting the Jewish immigrants’ East
European small town past with the burgeoning commercial and social
dimensions of the city. He writes,” in the process [of settlement] these
small town Jews were shaped into a new people. Gradually, at times
swiftly, and at considerable cost, they were to be transformed.”
Rischin avoids nostalgia and sentimentality. He describes the
inadequate housing conditions of the tenements, the oppressive condition
of sweatshop employment, the crowded unsanitary markets, and the
struggle to form unions. In contrast, he presents the
establishment of a vibrant Jewish press, and Yiddish theater, literature
and music.
Rischin moves beyond description of the “Jewish Quarter” to tell the
story of how the emerging New York Jewish community was changing the
city. A bibliography and dense footnotes compliment this narrative
of the immigrant settlement experience and the impetus for inclusion in
New York City. Review by LESPI Board Member Barry Feldman |
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| | Giving through AmazonSmile We love small local businesses. But if you happen to shop at Amazon, you can choose AmazonSmile,
which will donate a percentage of each sale to the charity of your
choice - we hope you'll pick Lower East Side Preservation Initiave
(LESPI)! |
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| | | Sign LESPI's Petition for a LES Historic District! |
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Join the approx. 3,000 people who have signed LESPI's petition for a
new Lower East Side historic district below Delancey Street, in the
blocks around the Tenement Museum. This is one of the city's and
country's most important historic communities, due to its
unique immigration, artistic, cultural and architectural history,
and the formidable role it has played in our city's and nation's
development. The only way to protect the historic Lower East Side
from complete demolition and redevelopment is city landmarking. Sign the petition HERE! |
| | Support
LESPI and look good doing it with a LESPI t-shirt! All proceeds
benefit LESPI's work. Only $25 (including shipping and handling).
Send a check made out to "LESPI/FCNY", and send to LESPI, 93 Third
Avenue, #1223, New York, NY 10003. Available in crew neck only;
indicate which shirt and size (contact us at info@LESPI-nyc.org or
347-827-1846 with questions). Unfortunately we cannot offer returns or exchanges. |
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| LESPI Books Make for Great Reading and Gifts! |
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| | | LESPI's books "East Village: Lens on the Lower East Side" and "Chinatown: Lens on the Lower East Side"
are each fascinating histories of their respective historic
communities, accompanied by the work of six boldly contemporary
professional photographers who capture the areas' special streetscapes,
people and spirit. All contributors have ties to the local
community. The East Village book is available at McNally Jackson on Prince Street and The Source on East 9th Street; the Chinatown book is available at Museum of Chinese in America on Centre Street, the Strand Bookstore on Broadway, Jackson McNally on Prince Street, and Pearl River Mart at Chelsea Market and Broadway in Tribeca. Due to COVID-19 please contact the store to check availability.
Or you can send a check for $25 (incl. shipping &
handling) made out to "LESPI/FCNY", to LESPI, 93 Third Avenue, #1223,
New York, NY 10003 - indicate which book you want. |
| | You're contribution will help us protect our historic LES buildings and streetscapes! |
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| | Lower East Side Preservation Initiative
93 Fourth Avenue #1223 | New York, New York 10003
347-827-1846 | info@LESPI-nyc.org www.LESPI-nyc.org © 2021 Lower East Side Preservation Initiative |
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