Lighthouse Hill Home Landmarked – 7 more to go from the Staten Island 8
Every time you think that it’s getting easier to save buildings in Staten Island, you get hit with a roll call like this.
Lighthouse Hill home landmarked
1856 Italianate villa on Meisner Avenue receives designation from city
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
By KAREN O’SHEA
ADVANCE STAFF WRITER
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A Lighthouse Hill house that was home to a prominent 19th-century lawyer, a 20th-century opera star and a landscape painter was named a city landmark yesterday.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously to approve the designation of an 1856 house at 190 Meisner Ave., a brick-and-stone Italianate villa where a landscape painter created murals of Staten Island in the former dining room.
Designation prevents a building from being demolished, and owners who want to make changes to the exterior of a landmark must get approval from the commission.
The house was the first to come to a vote among eight 19th-century Island buildings the commission has said it’s considering for landmarking. It may also have been one of the least controversial designations of the group.
Almost from the beginning, homeowner Robert R. Wakeham supported the move. He said he briefly objected to landmarking because it adds a regulatory hurdle but comes with no tax breaks or help for the homeowner. He reconsidered when he considered the years he spent restoring his house.
“After doing all this work, I don’t want it ever to be torn down. I’m in my 70s now and I want it to stay forever,” Wakeham said yesterday.
Other owners whose properties were targeted for landmarking have said the move would hurt them financially.
At a public hearing last month, the owner of the former Varnish Works factory in Elm Park said the looming landmarks status killed a deal he had to sell the building to a freight barge terminal.
A Great Kills homeowner said landmarking his house without designating other older homes in his neighborhood would devalue his property and punish him for being a good steward of the 19th-century building.
A Tottenville homeowner had the most unusual complaint. He told the commission he worried about his security and the unwanted attention landmark status would bring to his Arthur Kill Road house. He claimed “preservation perverts” had been coming by and looking in the windows since his house was nominated.
The other buildings being considered for landmarking will be voted on this summer, a Landmarks Commission spokeswoman said. She could not say what house would be voted on next.
Wakeham’s house on Lighthouse Hill was built by Nathaniel J. Wyeth, a prominent 19th-century attorney and assemblyman whose clients included railroad builder Cornelius Vanderbilt. In 1871, Wyeth served on a state panel to plan roads, parks, and streets for Staten Island. In 1925, the house was purchased by opera star Graham Marr, who lived there with the landscape painter Norman Robert Morrison. The two rebuilt the captain’s walk and Morrison painted murals of Staten Island inside the house. Wakeham bought the house in 1978.
Karen O’Shea covers real estate news for the Advance. She may be reached at [email protected] .
© 2007 Staten Island Advance
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