LPC Mandates Removal of Illegal Penthouse
From the Wall Street Journal
MAY 4, 2010
City: Take Off Top Floor of Townhouse
Landmark Commission Rules 68th Street Building Lacked Permit for Addition
By CRAIG KARMIN
A Manhattan townhouse owner is being forced to do something few, if any, New York homeowners have ever done before: tear down a top-floor addition to a building to comply with city landmark regulations.
The Landmark Preservation Commission decided in March that a sixth-floor addition to the building at 12-13 West 68th St. was in violation of landmark rules. The building’s owner has begun taking steps to remove the entire floor, according to a commission official.
How that new floor ever got approved and constructed in the first place is just one of the many disputes surrounding this $10 million property that is causing a ruckus on the West Side by the neighborhood’s preservation advocates.
The demolition of the townhouse’s sixth-floor addition could be the first time the city forced a building owner to destroy part of the property for what amounts primarily to aesthetic considerations.
Mark Silberman, the landmark commission’s general counsel, said officials there don’t recall any previous instance when a building owner had to remove an addition after it has been built.
“I can’t think of another case where an owner added a full story to the building,” he says. “This is unusual because the addition was put on the face of the building.”