Category Archives: From the Neighborhoods

2016 Six to Celebrate Tours

Saturday, September 24, 11:00AM: East New York

Following up on the success of our first tour of East New York in the spring, HDC is pleased to offer a repeat tour of this fascinating corner of Brooklyn! East New York has certainly been the talk of the town lately, as the City moves forward to rezone the neighborhood, along with 14 others. However, East New York is also known for its rich and somewhat troubled history.  Join us for this tour, led by Farrah Lafontant, neighborhood resident and member of Preserving East New York, the newly formed civic group working to preserve the neighborhood’s built heritage. The tour will begin at the 75th Police Precinct Station and include visits to a Magistrates Court, the former site of the East New York Savings Bank, Maxwell’s Bakery and the Borden Dairy Company factory complex, which was recently heard by the Landmarks Preservation Commission for potential landmark status.

After the tour we will head to Arts East New York for a reception. The party will allow neighbors to learn more about PENY and the work they are doing in East New York. The party is free and open to the public, you do not have to attend the tour to attend the party.


Sunday, October 30, 11:30AM: Clay Avenue & Grand Concourse

Join us for a tour highlighting two very different historic districts in The Bronx! We will begin with a stroll through the charming Clay Avenue Historic District, a one-block stretch of remarkably intact and refreshingly unchanged rowhouses. Following this treasure of a block, the tour will loop back to the Grand Concourse Historic District to take in a smattering of Revival and Art Deco apartment buildings. This juxtaposition of small-scale, late 19th century rowhouses and large-scale, early 20th century apartment buildings will allow participants to compare and contrast trends in the development of middle-class housing a generation or so apart. The tour will end at another locally designated gem, the Andrew Freedman Home, located on the Grand Concourse at East 166th Street. The home has a colorful and unlikely origin story, having been built by millionaire philanthropist Andrew Freedman as a retirement facility for wealthy people who had lost their fortunes.

REGISTER


Sunday, October 30, 2:00PM:  East River Vistas: Architecture and Changing Lifestyles in Yorkville

Once home to bucolic farmland, the eastern edge of Yorkville was dotted with clapboard farmhouses and country houses before being transformed into an industrial factory hub at the turn of the 20th century. As immigrants settled in Yorkville, tenement buildings were constructed, and by the 1930s the area around East End Avenue was home to luxury apartments designed by elite architects. Join the Historic Districts Council and FRIENDS of the Upper East Side Historic Districts as we track this fascinating history of housing in eastern Yorkville with architectural historian and famed tour guide, Francis Morrone. Highlights will include East End Avenue, Gracie Square and Carl Schurz Park, model tenements such as the Cherokee Apartments, the idyllic rowhouses at Henderson Place and everything in between, including the largest white brick high-rise in the universe!

SOLD OUT


Support is provided in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Additional support is provided by City Council Members Ben Kallos, Rosie Mendez, Mark Levine, Inez Dickens, Vincent Gentile, Corey Johnson, Stephen Levin, Margaret Chin, Dan Garodnick, and Rafael Salamanca and New York State Assembly Members Deborah Glick, Richard Gottfried, and Daniel O’Donnell.

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Advocacy in a Changing Lower East Side

Wednesday, August 10, 6:00PM

Join us for a tour of some of the highlights of one of Manhattan’s most historic and storied neighborhoods, the Lower East Side! The area has been experiencing rapid change in the form of large-scale development projects over the last decade. In the seeming blink of an eye, entire blocks have been demolished, leaving gaping holes in the landscape, while individual tenements have been replaced with glassy new condo buildings. Yet, its character-defining tenement architecture still exhibits the Lower East Side’s illustrious past as a dense immigrant enclave of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To save a representative piece of this historic tableau, advocates have been working hard to preserve sections of the neighborhood so that its story might live on through its physical fabric. The tour will include the intact areas that are the subject of preservation focus, but will also explore its changing landscape.

Click here to register 

Help! Spot-zoning bringing towers to Inwood

Proposed 23-story tower from Ft. Tryon Park. 4650 Broadway visibility study by Saratoga Associates

Proposed 23-story tower from Ft. Tryon Park. 4650 Broadway visibility study by Saratoga Associates

The Historic Districts Council chose Inwood as one of the Six to Celebrate neighborhoods in 2011 for its historical, architectural and environmental attributes. Nearly half of the land in Inwood is public park space which preserves natural terrain and geological features of Manhattan, as opposed to the designed landscapes of many parks in New York City. Thus, Inwood’s distinctive development pattern and architecture was created in relation to the original landscape of Manhattan Island.

One of Inwood and Washington Heights’ treasured historical resources is Fort Tryon Park, a 67-acre park which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of only ten Scenic Landmarks in all of New York City.  Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. the park’s landscape is unrivaled in its romantic views of the Hudson River, the Palisades, and its rich topography.

However, the super-tall development found in other parts of the city has arrived above 200th Street in Manhattan in this low-scale neighborhood. Ft. Tryon Park and the Inwood community is currently threatened by two rezonings which will irreversibly alter the experience of the park and the neighborhood at large.  The proposed rezoning for 4650 Broadway will be a 27-story building abutting the park, four times taller than the surrounding buildings’ heights. The other proposal, 4566 Broadway, would allow a 19-story development (increase in FAR from 3.44 to 9.96).

Click here to send a letter saying “NO” to spot-rezoning and require an Environmental Impact Study (EIS) of the cumulative impacts of these projects, and undertake a comprehensive plan to develop appropriately scaled development, similar to the City’s InwoodNYC plan immediately to the north.

 

March 30, 2016 Audubon Park Meeting on Landmarking

Join us at this meeting to learn what we are doing and how you can help.

Representatives from the Historic Districts Council will discuss the architectural, cultural and economic benefits of historic districts and address misconceptions about the impacts of designation on operating and repair costs.

Come and meet your neighbors as we help our community.

2016 Six to Celebrate Launch Party

Introducing the 2016 Six to Celebrate!

Six to Celebrate annually identifies six historic NYC neighborhoods that merit preservation. These will be priorities for HDC’s advocacy and consultation over a yearlong period.

To learn more about the 2016 Neighborhoods click here 

 

To honor our new Six to Celebrate we will be hosting a party at the South Street Seaport Museum’s Melville Gallery at 213 Water Street on January 28th at 6 pm!

To register for the event click here 


Audubon Park, Manhattan

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Clay Avenue, The Bronx

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Crown Heights South, Brooklyn

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East New York, Brooklyn

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Richmond Hill, Queens

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Yorkville, Manhattan

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Support for Six to Celebrate is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York City Councilmembers Inez Dickens, Daniel Garodnick, Vincent Gentile, Corey Johnson, Ben Kallos, Mark Levine, and Eric Ulrich.

THE GREAT WOODLAWN CEMETERY SCAVENGER HUNT

Date:                     Saturday, September 26

Time:                     Scavenger Hunt starts at 2:00PM; Reception at Rambling House starts at 4:00PM

Location:              Meet at the Work Gate, East 233rd Street between Katonah Avenue and Vireo Avenue (across from 329 E. 233rdStreet and one block west of Woodlawn’s main entrance at Webster Avenue)

Cost:                      $10 per team (up to 4 people per team) (Click here to register )

This fun-filled scavenger hunt of The Woodlawn Cemetery will celebrate some of this National Historic Landmark’s most famous residents, landscapes, and monuments, as well as the adjacent Woodlawn Heights neighborhood, one of the Historic Districts Council’s 2015 Six to Celebrate!

Choose from five themed trails in search of some of the cemetery’s most famous memorials and sites. Each trail covers 1.5 miles (no hills!) of the cemetery’s picturesque lanes, and will last roughly 60-90 minutes.