Landmark Wish List for Brooklyn Unveiled
From Courier-Life
03/22/2007
Group touts new ‘landmarks wish list’ – 18 historic homes part of Four Borough Neighborhood Preservation Alliance effort
By Helen Klein
In an effort to preserve Brooklyn’s heritage, one preservation organization is seeking landmark status for structures around the borough.
The Four Borough Neighborhood Preservation Alliance (FBNPA), working with local advocates, has come up with a list of 18 buildings and nine potential historic districts in the borough that it would like to see designated by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). As part of an effort to maintain highlights of the city’s built environment, the group has also developed lists of potential landmarks for Queens and Staten Island.
Among the Brooklyn neighborhoods that FBNPA is recommending for landmark status are Canarsie’s Seaview Village, two Victorian Flatbush enclaves (Ditmas Park West and West Midwood), Prospect Heights, and streets in Williamsburg and Downtown Brooklyn. They are also recommending the expansion of the tiny Carroll Gardens landmark area.
Among the structures on the list are several in Canarsie, Gravesend and Williamsburg, as well as one in Bay Ridge, one in East Flatbush, and one in Bushwick.
The Bay Ridge entry on the list is the Dr. Elliot/Blue Cross Mansion at 122 76th Street in Bay Ridge. The East Flatbush home recommended for landmark status by the group is the home in which Brooklyn Dodgers great Jackie Robinson lived between 1947 and 1950, at 5224 Tilden Avenue. The Bushwick building is the South Bushwick Reformed Church, 855 Bushwick Avenue.
In Canarsie, the group is asking for landmark designation for the American Legion Hall, at East 92nd Street and Conklin Avenue; the Firehouse at 1361 Rockaway Parkway; and the Midget Squadron Yacht Club of Jamaica Bay, at Seaview Avenue and Paerdegat Avenue North.
There are three buildings in Gravesend which the FBNPA has suggested designation for. These are the Ryder-Van Cleef House, at 38 Village Road North; the Hicks-Platt (Lady Deborah Moody) House, at 17 Gravesend Neck Road; and the Charles M. Ryder House, at 32 Village Road North. The two homes on Village Road North date to the 1700s. The Hicks-Platt House dates back to the 1640s.
There’s also a host of Williamsburg industrial buildings including the Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory at Greenpoint Avenue and Kent Avenue, the Matchett Candy Factory, at 390 Wythe Avenue, and the Old Dutch Mustard Company, at 80 Metropolitan Avenue.
The list was compiled, “Basically as a result of a consultation process we went through with groups and individuals in Brooklyn,” noted Bob Furman, FBNPA’s chairperson. “Some that were suggested we did not adopt. Most, we did.”