A plan to save ‘layers of history’ around new Penn Station

The Hotel Pennsylvania at night.

By Chris Lombardi

Last December, as Anna Hayes Levin of Community Board 4 entered the Farley Post Office to give the board’s comments on the new Extended Moynihan Station, she noticed that the church across the street was swathed in scaffolding, in what looked suspiciously like a demolition.

Yet the church, the Glad Tidings Tabernacle, was already included in the comments Levin held in her hand, which named the early Romanesque Revival church as an iconic local historic resource. The statement noted that when the church was built in 1868, it had “formed part of the row house/low tenement environment in which Pennsylvania Station was built.”

But by December, the Delaware-based church that has owned the building since 1992 had sold it for a reported $12 million to a development company. “I guess they got an offer they couldn’t refuse,” said Edward Kirkland, former chair of CB 4’s Chelsea Preservation and Planning Committee.

The year 2008 began with mixed news for historic preservation advocates concerned about historic buildings near Penn Station. Those fighting to save the Pennsylvania Hotel, the 1918 colossus built at the same time as the old Pennsylvania Station, were cheered to learn that the Historic Districts Council had joined Community Board 5 in advocating landmark status for the old hotel. But the Friends of Moynihan Station—including HDC, the Municipal Art Society, and Boards 4 and 5—were disturbed by the Glad Tidings demolition, as well as rumors that the landmark Macy’s might be lured away from Herald Square.

Now, as the Empire State Development Corporation absorbs all the public comments on the station, they face renewed federal oversight of their plans and a request from advocates for what some have called “preemptive landmarking” for local buildings without such protection.

The Friends, especially the Municipal Art Society, are hoping that federal oversight, as mandated in ESDC’s own scoping document, will help prevent the demolition of more signature New York churches, theatres and office buildings because of the “station for the 21st century.”

“We urge the city to designate eligible buildings and districts prior to approval of the rezoning,” MAS advocacy director Lisa Kersavage said at the hearing.

The New Yorker Hotel on 35th Street

A great new Penn Station, in place of… ?

The Extended Moynihan Station is the newest proposal from Moynihan Ventures, the joint Related Companies-Vornado partnership chosen by the Empire State Development Corporation to execute the city’s plans for a new Pennsylvania Station. At the heart of the plan is moving Madison Square Garden to the west end of the Farley Post Office and building a new, “grand” station in place of the Garden. In exchange for building the new station, the Venture would receive about 1.5 million square feet of development rights in a new “development sub-district” from 28th to 35th Streets. Now, as the new Moynihan Station Advisory Committee works with ESDC on the proposal’s environmental impact statement, preservation advocates plan to ensure that new development doesn’t harm some of New York’s most venerable buildings.

Even before the proposed sub-district, the Hudson Yards and West Chelsea rezonings had already changed the real estate flavor of the area, with new hotels and residential complexes already rising where older buildings once stood. The hot real-estate market also has encouraged demolitions like that of Glad Tidings (whose property values increased 40 percent since 2005).

Moynihan Station’s district, according to the New York Times, may now breach some of New York’s oldest sites. Times reporter Charles Bagli reported in December that in addition to Vornado’s plans to demolish the Pennsylvania Hotel, the Venture had approached the Macy’s Corporation about relocating the store to the planned retail complex at the new Moynihan Station.

The latter plan met with immediate outrage. “We question whether Macy’s would go for it anyway,” said Howard Mendes, chair of CB 5’s Landmarks Committee. “Leave Herald Square? Give up their street credit, those windows people visit every year? Give up the parade—to be in some indoor mall?”

Mendes also lauded recent momentum toward saving the Pennsylvania Hotel, applauding the Historic Districts Council for requesting that the Landmarks Preservation Commission designate the hotel a city landmark, despite plans by Vornado to demolish it and replace it with an office tower. In November Mendes’ committee made the same recommendation for the hotel, which was designed by the same architects as the old Penn Station. With those two endorsements, said Colin Casey, aide to Senator Thomas Duane, the Save the Hotel group has “started the process of actually gaining public support.”

Gregory Jones, founder of Save the Hotel, called the Council’s letter “a major milestone in the fight to preserve a valuable piece of NYC history,” but that the hotel is not safe from Vornado, which always has “alternate plans in the works.” Still, the group was heartened by this week’s announcement that Merrill Lynch, the planned tenant of Vornado’s tower, will decide instead to remain downtown.

The LPC has remained unmoved, telling Chelsea Now that it has “determined the Hotel Pennsylvania does not meet the criteria for an individual landmark, and we have no plans to revisit this decision,” according to press officer Lisi de Bourbon. But Jones and others hoped that Merrill’s withdrawal will buy them some time to organize—including a planned rally at the hotel this coming Wednesday.

“They [Vornado] should plow money back into the hotel,” said Mendes, “I can’t see tearing it down. It may be battered on the interior, but it has a lot of good history.”

To HDC director Simeon Bankoff, the issues around both the hotel and Macy’s are emblematic of a development process that far too often leaves out the past. “It would be nice if in the environmental review process for these proposals, these issues, would come up,” Bankoff told Chelsea Now.

Asked about the idea of “preemptive landmarking,” Bankoff laughed gently, “In a world of infinite resources, sure!” But according to Kersavage, infinite resources are not needed; just public pressure, combined with the spotlight of federal oversight.

Honoring the layers of history

As noted last month by New Yorker writer Burkhard Bilger, nearly every block in New York could be considered a “historic district.” Nonetheless, added Bilger, “fewer than 3 percent of the city’s million or so building are protected as landmarks.”

A building can be old, like Glad Tidings or the New Yorker Hotel, and still not be an official landmark—even if it is on the U.S. Register of Historic Places or even, like Macy’s, a National Historic Monument (akin to Mount Rushmore). Federal designation does give owners tax incentives for maintaining their buildings—both a 20 percent Federal credit and a five-year tax abatement against any increases in value that result from rehabilitating the building—and offers help with restoration funds. But neither the state or city designations limit what an owner can do with the building, even if he or she chooses to sell and allow the buyer to demolish it. For such protection, “only city landmark status matters,” said CB 4’s Kirkland.

LPC’s de Bourbon agreed, telling Chelsea Now that her commission was the only governmental entity capable of actually stopping a demolition. “New York has the nation’s strongest [preservation] laws,” de Bourbon said Wednesday. “Owners of designated buildings have to come to us before they do any work on a building designated as a landmark, or one in a historic district. We can say ‘no’ to an alteration or demolition if we feel it’s inappropriate.”

But historic buildings without landmark status abound in the Penn Station area. MAS has identified 61 “historic resources” within the proposed sub-district, including but not limited to Macy’s and the Pennsylvania Hotel. Others include St. Michael’s Church, built at the same time and in a similar style to the original Pennsylvania Station; the Fur Art Building, a 1927 14-story garment loft building whose “tripartite arched entrance gives way to a series of setbacks crowned by stone turrets on the upper floors”; and the former William F. Sloan Memorial YMCA, built as “sleeping accommodations and social facilities for men in the armed services passing through the city.” Others include the West Side Jewish Center and the lost Glad Tidings Tabernacle.

The Glad Tidings demolition only intensified advocates’ determination to make historic preservation more than just a buzzword in the Extended Moynihan Station’s environmental impact statement. “Mitigation should include a commitment by the Landmarks Preservation Commission to study and make a report on designations in the area,” said part of CB 4’s letter to ESDC.

Here come the feds

Review by Landmarks is already standard for a major project like Moynihan Station. “In every environmental review, LPC’s role is to comment on potential impacts a project may have on historically and architecturally significant buildings and sites,” said de Bourbon via e-mail. She added the LPC has recently surveyed more than 550 Midtown buildings for possible designation.

But advocates questioned the effectiveness of the commission’s glacial pace and careful recommendations. For example, said an assessment by Levin and Kirkland, the LPC’s contribution to the Hudson Yards and West Chelsea rezonings rather uselessly “listed a large number of historic resources as endangered and flatly stated that their probable loss was essentially unmitigatable.”

What’s different now, according to MAS’ Kersavage, is a clause in ESDC’s scoping document for the station: “The EIS will also address as necessary Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.”

Section 106 mandates federal oversight for any project involving the use of federal funds. MAS has requested to become a “consulting party” for the Section 106 process, said Kersavage, a role the organization played during federal evaluation of the “survivor staircase” at the World Trade Center.

The long, quite public approval process “will give us time to build public awareness of the most important buildings,” said Kersavage.

How much of our soul are we going to lose?

When Chelsea Now asked ESDC about these concerns, spokesman A.J. Carter could say only that MAS and CB 4’s testimony was being “considered” as the final scoping document is written. Carter added in a Wednesday e-mail that “we expect that the State, the City and the Venture will be coordinating with the public in general and the Community Boards in particular as the Project moves forward.”

When they do, said Anna Hayes Levin, they should keep alive the visible past of the Empire State they’re trying to develop.

“What’s important is that we finally get the new Pennsylvania Station,” said Levin. “But along the way—how much of our soul are we willing to lose?”