“Try to imagine New York City without Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Jefferson Market Courthouse, the Flatiron Building, or the brownstones in Stuyvesant Heights, Greenwich Village, Brooklyn Heights and the St. Nicholas Historic Districts.”
Bowne House, Main Street S. and Franklin Place, Queens, 1929. Landmarked 2/15/1966. Borough President Queens collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
These words are printed on a brochure distributed by New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1975, ten years after Mayor Robert F. Wagner signed the bill that established the agency on April 19, 1965.
The story of landmark preservation in New York City neither begins nor ends in 1965, and the collections of the Municipal Library provide the documentation.
The Flatiron Building, ca. 1936. WPA Federal Writers’ Project collection, NYC Municipal Archives. Landmarked 9/20/1966.
Mayor Wagner’s subject files and the records of City Planning Commissioner William F. R. Ballard (1961-1969) in the Municipal Archives are good resources to explore the topic beginning in the early 1960s and leading up to establishment of the Commission in 1965.
One of the earliest documents in Wagner's subject file folder is a copy of his press release dated June 19, 1961, announcing the appointment of a “committee of prominent citizens ...for the purpose of developing a program for the preservation of structures of historic and esthetic importance in the City.”
Six months later, Wagner issued another press release stating that his new Committee had recommended the establishment of a Landmarks Preservation Commission to begin the work of identifying historic structures. Soon after, in February 1962, Wagner requested $50,000 in the budget to fund the new Commission. Receiving approval in early April, he appointed twelve members to the Commission under the leadership of architect Geoffrey Platt.
Mayor Wagner’s Commission could act in only an advisory capacity. It quickly became evident that it would need significantly greater power to protect historic buildings and districts. Using documents in Wagner’s files and the records of City Planning Commissioner Ballard, researchers can explore the ensuing back-and-forth with councilmembers that took place over the next few years as they crafted what would become Local Law 46 of 1965. In essence, the new Law provided that the “Temporary” Landmarks Preservation Commission become a permanent Commission with control over the building exteriors in historic districts.
New York County “Tweed” Courthouse, ca. 1955. NYC Municipal Archives Collection. Landmarked 10/10/1984.
Ballard’s files are notable for the comments solicited and received from interested parties regarding the proposed legislation. His files contain a transcript of City Planning Commission member Harmon Goldstone’s testimony before the Council on December 3, 1964. Goldstone spoke eloquently about the benefits and necessity of the Landmarks law. In his statement, he cited “a quotation attributed to a former Republican President: ‘I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lies. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.’ —Abraham Lincoln.” Addressing concerns regarding limitations on private property proposed by the legislation, Goldstone noted: “Just as the zoning power, the police power, the power of eminent domain must take precedence over the interests of the individual, so it is proposed to protect the public interest in our common past.”
Taking up the question of what motived Mayor Wagner to create the Landmark Preservation Committee (and later Commission) in the early 1960s, Ballard’s files provide some clues. Again, Goldstone’s testimony is pertinent: “It was, in fact, at the suggestion of James Felt, then Chairman of the Planning Commission, and with the advice of Maxwell Lehman, Deputy City Administrator, that Mayor Wagner appointed in May 1961, a committee of interested citizens to explore the problem.” The Municipal Archives’ holdings include records created by James Felt during his term as City Planning Commissioner (1956-1963). The inventory does not list an obvious subject in his records, e.g. “Landmarks,” but a closer examination of his correspondence might reveal additional intelligence about what motivated Felt to make the suggestion to Wagner.
Landmarks Preservation Committee brochure, 1988. NYC Municipal Library.
The Municipal Library collection also serves as a resource to answer what prompted Mayor Wagner to create the Commission. Among the Library holdings are several published sources that discuss the historical antecedents of the preservation movement. For example, a report published in 1989 by the Historic City Committee of the Municipal Art Society of New York, entitled “New York, the Historic City,” included a section on the “Background and Development of the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission.” According to the report, “The real flowering of historic preservation in America... came in the decades after World War II as a building boom began to actively threaten historic buildings across the nation.” Not surprisingly, according to the report, growing opposition to Robert Moses played a role: “In Manhattan the modernist glass and steel skyscrapers which had begun to fill midtown, and the white brick apartment buildings interrupting residential rowhouse blocks, coupled with the cumulative effect of thirty years of Robert Moses’ urban renewal work in all boroughs, began to generate citizen interest in the cityscape as it stood.”
Another important impetus, according to the report, came from the Brooklyn Heights Association. In the late 1950s, the Association drafted legislation proposing landmark protection for its historic neighborhood. According to the report, this action made it clear to the city’s political powers that “...historic preservation would be supported by the grass-roots citizenry.”
Alice Austen House, Staten Island, ca. 1940. Landmarked 5/13/69. 1940s Tax Department photographs, NYC Municipal Archives.
Returning to Wagner’s file, two carefully clipped and mounted newspaper articles may also point to a motivation for the legislative action to preserve landmarks. From the New York Times on April 2, 1962, an article announced establishment of the Commission. Tellingly, the story quickly dispensed with the facts of the new Commission in two sentences. It then continued for several paragraphs describing the then-impending demolition of Pennsylvania Station: “Mr. Platt, asked about the architects’ protest over the planned demolition of Penn Station, said he personally regretted that his commission had come into being too late to try to save the terminal.”
Pennsylvania Station, 1961. Demolished 1964. Mayor Robert F. Wagner papers, NYC Municipal Archives.
The second clipping is an editorial that ran on March 3, 1962, in which the author, Elias S. Wilentz, decried the imminent destruction of the “historic Walt Whitman building as part of its [Housing and Redevelopment Board] plan for Cadman Plaza urban renewal.” The writer noted that the building, “where the great poet helped set the type and print the first edition of “Leaves of Grass” in 1855, marks the central event in Whitman’s life and one of the most historic occasions in our nation’s cultural history.” Like Penn Station, the protests came to naught and the Whitman building vanished.
Further research in Municipal Archives and Library collections will undoubtedly shed light on the origins of the preservation movement and New York City's pioneering agency.
High Bridge, Aqueduct and Pedestrian Walk, Harlem River at West 170th Street, Borough of The Bronx, to High Bridge Park, Borough of Manhattan, ca. 1926. Landmarked 11/10/1970. Municipal Archives Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
The Municipal Library collection is also a rich resource for information about the Commission after its establishment in 1965. All landmark designation reports are easily accessible online via the Library’s Government Publications Portal. Searching the Library catalog pulls up dozens of entries for reports, audits, guides and publications about the Commission and its work. The Library’s vertical files are stuffed with clippings and ephemera charting the trajectory of the often-controversial City agency and its subsequent history – fights over designations, court challenges, etc.
Soon after Mayor Wagner signed the bill in 1965, the Landmarks Preservation Commission got to work. Six months later, the Commission notified the Mayor that a public hearing would be held on October 19, 1965, to consider designation of City Hall, the Municipal Building, New York County [Tweed] Courthouse, Surrogate’s Court (Hall of Records), the Brooklyn Bridge and Fire House, Engine Company 31, at 87 Lafayette Street.
The Surrogates’ Courthouse and the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, ca. 1939. Landmarked 2/15/1966. 1940s Tax Department photographs, NYC Municipal Archives.
Jack Lutsky, Wagner’s “Legal Aide” dutifully forwarded the notice to several relevant City offices requesting comments. One response is worth noting. “Dear Mr. Lutsky,” Bradford N. Clark, the Commissioner of the Department of Public Works wrote, “The designation of the Surrogates Court (Hall of Records) is considered appropriate. However, it should be pointed out that the long-range plans for the Manhattan Civic Center contemplate the demolition of this building...”.
Oh. For the Record readers interested in how that played out are welcome to re-read Manhattan’s Civic Center Plan 1964.
