2024 Landmarks Lion: Michael S. Hiller
You’ll find HDC everywhere from press conferences to community board hearings supporting community-led efforts to save culturally, architecturally, and historically significant places in all five boroughs. Still, the backbone of our work remains the New York City Landmarks Law, which creates a regulatory framework for our advocacy. Without the law, we couldn’t do what we do. Just like we need the law, we need legal minds fighting to strengthen protections for our significant historic places.
Without champion lawyers like HDC’s 2024 Landmarks Lion Michael S. Hiller working to protect and uphold the legal structure for historic preservation in New York City, there’s a significant chance the integrity of the Landmarks Law could become compromised and eroded over time. We hope you will join us at this year’s Lion to learn more about Michael’s accomplishments as well as what he thinks we need to do to make sure the Landmarks Law remains strong and relevant in the future.
HDC’s 2024 Landmarks Lion Michael S. Hiller handles the lion’s share of preservation law on behalf of preservationists in New York City. In this series of case studies, we’ll look back at some of his most celebrated efforts to save some of New York’s beloved places.
Our First Installment: NYPL!
In 2013, SuperLawyer Michael S. Hiller joined the fight led by the Committee to Save the New York Public Library (CSNYPL) and Citizens Defending Libraries to stop the New York Public Library’s destructive “Central Library Plan”. At the time, the Library planned to sell the Mid-Manhattan branch (and Science Business & Industry Library), and move its circulating collections into a new space created by demolition of the stacks in the Central Research Library on 42nd Street – which not only hold the library’s renowned collection, but also support the Rose Reading Room above them.
In response to this calamitous plan, which removed more than 3 million books from the stacks, CSNYPL —a coalition of
scholars, writers, readers and architects, including esteemed preservationist Christabel Gough —joined with Citizens
Defending Libraries and turned to Michael Hiller to take on the Library in New York State Supreme Court.
This was a preservation battle for the ages. In fact, New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman told New York Magazine that the plan, if consummated, “will be considered one of the calamities of the city’s history, along with Penn Station,” comparing the Library plan to New York’s original architectural sin.
In order to save the city’s foremost research facility, Michael turned to research and unearthed a 1978 Agreement between NYPL, New York City and New York State that required prior consent from the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) before any structural alteration could be made to the library’s 42nd Street Central Branch. Under that agreement, NYPL and the City also each promised “to protect and preserve the historical integrity of features, materials, appearance, workmanship and environment” of the Central Library, a promise Michael argued that “they would break if the stacks were to be removed.” In addition, Michael’s firm unearthed three trust indentures from mid-19th Century New York, each of which required that the books that would have been relocated to New Jersey were gifted to the NYPL upon the express condition that they never be removed. The arguments persuaded Mayor de Blasio to withdraw his support for the plan, and the stacks remained. Thanks, Michael!
Fittingly, this story of the fight to save the library became a book. In 2015, the reporter Scott Sherman published Patience and Fortitude: Power, Real Estate, and the Fight to Save a Public Library. In the book, Sherman calls Michael a “pugnacious Manhattan litigator.” You can check out a copy from the Library here.
Our Second Installment: The Hopper-Gibbons House at 339 West 29th Street
The Hopper-Gibbons House at 339 West 29th Street, built 1846-47, is one of the last extant documented Underground Railroad site in Manhattan. Abby Hopper Gibbons and James Sloan Gibbons purchased the house in 1852. The pair were abolitionist Quakers, and their home soon became a prominent site of abolitionist advocacy. The house was targeted during the 1863 Draft Riots which were characterized by deadly violence against Black New Yorkers, Black institutions, and abolitionist sites. On July 14th, 1863, the house was ransacked and set on fire. Members of the family were able to escape across the building’s roof to safety.
After the building became part of the Lamartine Place Historic District in 2009, its owners built a rooftop addition without permits, which was declared illegal by both the Department of Buildings and the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division. Despite these rulings, the owners came before LPC in 2016 seeking a Certificate of Appropriateness for the illegal addition.
That’s when advocates turned to Michael Hiller. Hiller knew that he had to convince LPC that a rooftop addition would never be appropriate at this site, because the roof of 339 West 29th street was integral to the building’s role as part of the Underground Railroad, and its experience during the Draft Riots.
Hiller reached out to civil rights hero John Lewis who represented Georgia’s 5th Congressional District, providing documentation that two enslaved people who had stopped at the Hopper-Gibbons house on their way to freedom had come from the area now comprising Georgia’s 5th District. Lewis’s office brought the case to the attention of the New York Members of Congressional Black Caucus. As Hiller told the publication SuperLawyers, “The Congressional Black Caucus sent correspondence on our behalf. All of a sudden the state assembly, state senator, some counsel, everyone galvanized behind our cause. In the end, not only did we win in 2017, it was a unanimous rejection of the plan, and it never came back.”
Today, the addition is gone, and the rooftop is intact, a tangible link to vital history.
Our Third Installment: The First Church of Christ, Scientist
Starting in 2015, Michael fought on behalf of neighbors against an inappropriate redevelopment plan and hardship case at The First Church of Christ, Scientist (361 Central Park West) that would have punched 70 windows into the facade, and converted the church into luxury condos. Michael knew that the church could remain a community space. Indeed it will. In the face of Michael’s argument, the developers withdrew their plan and sold the building to the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. LPC approved the Museum’s adaptive reuse plans for the building in 2021, and the Museum plans to open in the space in 2028.
Want to learn more about Michael’s accomplishments and how you can help get involved in upholding the Landmarks Law for future generations? Join us at the New York City Bar Association on October 29th for drinks, dinner, and discussion!
Photo by Mateusz Walendzik from Pexels