Rally to save 35 Cooper Square!
Where: 35 Cooper Square, between East Fifth & Sixth Streets on the Bowery
When: 4:30pm, Friday, January 28
Who: HDC, Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, City Lore, East 5th Street Block Association, 6th and 7th Street Block Association, East Village Community Coalition, Friends of NoHo, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, elected representatives and others!
“…when I first laid eyes on 35 Cooper Square , I knew it was the fulfillment of all those fantasies of art and the artist’s life, la vie de boheme. . .it was my dream house.”
–Diane DiPrima, Memoirs of a Beatnik
The oldest building on Cooper Square, and one of the oldest buildings of the original Bowery, this charming Federal style building, built c.1825 with the traditional gambrel roof, twin-pedimented dormers, and large end chimneys also boasts historical and cultural associations ranging from a direct descendant of Peter Stuyvesant to much later habitation by Liza Minelli and Diane DiPrima, an influential poet of the Beat Generation and current poet laureate of San Francisco.
For both historical and cultural reasons, losing this house would be a significant loss for New York City. As Assembly member Deborah Glick recently stated in a letter to the LPC supporting a hearing for the building: “it is clear that this type of building needs the protections granted by landmark status to survive. Absent these safeguards this building will likely by razed…[for] yet another out of scale structure with no respect for the character and ethos of the neighborhood”.
Responding late last year to rumors that 35 Cooper might soon be demolished, HDC, Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and Lower East Side Preservation Initiative jointly wrote to the Landmarks Preservation Commission urging that the building be heard as a potential landmark. Accompanying our appeal was a strong support letter from City Council Member Rosie Mendez, who also met on site with LPC Chair Robert Tierney to advocate for the issue.
Unfortunately, the LPC has refused to hold a public hearing on the building, stating that the building’s facade has undergone too much alteration. However, many Federal-style buildings, in frankly much more altered state, have been landmarked. As recently as 2007, the LPC designated the significantly-altered 511 and 513 Grand Street as individual landmarks on which occasion Commissioner Tierney stated: “These Federal-style treasures recall an important period of New York city ’s development.”
We agree and we believe that argument applies to 35 Cooper Square as well.
Please sign the online PETITION to save 35 Cooper Square:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/landmark35coopersquare/