Letters to the Editor

Volume Number 1 Issue Number 9 / November 24 -30, 2006

Letters to the Editor

Mortgage Mystery

To The Editor:
Re “Dean: Right back at you” (letter, by Ward B. Ewing, Nov. 10):
Dean Ewing writes that General Theological Seminary not only gave mortgages to 30 homeowners in what is now the Chelsea Historic District but also 80 mortgages to homes in Harlem and the Lower East Side. This raises several questions. Were these individual mortgages or did the seminary invest in a fund run by another organization that had been set up to give mortgages? How much was invested? My point is this: A friend of mine gives $50 a year to FINCA, which lends money to 450,000 clients in the Third World. Can he honestly say that he has lent money to 450,000 women who are running micro-businesses?

The dean also says that the mortgage money was lent at half mortgage rates. The 1970s were a time of great inflation and the Federal Reserve under President Carter was busy choking inflation with very high rates. I remember a client of mine buying bonds at 18 percent. Half of that is still a good rate.

If the seminary was lending millions to fund more than 100 low-cost mortgages, wouldn’t it have been more prudent to use some of the money in conserving its own historic buildings? It could have used this money to restore buildings, as was needed, and not wait until they were in much worse condition.

Finally, if mortgages were given for 30 years, the proceeds would have been coming due in the 1990s and in this decade. Wouldn’t a great cash flow be available to renovate all the seminary buildings? Did the 110 mortgages get paid back? What happened to all the money?
Justin Hoy

Architect was articulate

To The Editor:
Re “Seminary has a historic opportunity to get it right” (talking point, by Francis Morrone, Nov. 3):

Congratulations to Francis Morrone for making such a considered and articulate contribution to the sometimes overheated discussion about the General Theological Seminary’s building plans. As an architectural historian familiar, to a degree few others are, with the historical built environment of Manhattan, Mr. Morrone has provided a reasoned and rational view of the problems — not with the seminary, but with the excessively large building and the “ruthless exploitation of land values” that is behind it. The many, many of us who live in the neighborhood and would — if this project is approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission and City Planning Commission — have to live with “the imposition of a chic but brutal glass architecture where it is least appropriate” deeply appreciate his words.

Mary Swartz
Swartz is president, West 400 Block Association, 21st, 22nd and 23rd Sts.

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