NEWS: 70 Lefferts Place – it's important to acknowledge "wins"
From the Brooklyn Downtown Star:
Land(mark) Speed Record on Brooklyn Home
By Nik Kovac
Dateline : Thursday, December 21, 2006
For months the rumors on Clinton Hill sidewalks – and in the blogosphere – were running rampant all over the old yellow mansion along Lefferts Place. Last Tuesday, the city’s powerful Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) put the whispers to bed.
“This elegant home,” observed LPC Chairman Robert Tierney, “has defined the character of this neighborhood for a century and a half, and we are thrilled that it will continue to have a presence for generations to come. It is an architectural, historic and cultural treasure and deserves to be protected.”
Lots of people – both local old timers and citywide preservation advocates – had been saying similar things about the two-story 1854 Italianate villa, but none of that matters unless Tierney says it, too. Last week he not only said it, but he voted on it – as did the rest of the LPC commissioners. Their unanimous roll call to landmark the antebellum structure was taken unusually fast.
“This was an astonishing and remarkable act by the Landmarks Commission,” gushed Simeon Bankoff, a close observer of the LPC. “They heard the testimony and they acted, bam! They usually leave the public record open for a while. This is only the second time I’ve seen them vote on the same day as the hearing.”
“He’s right,” confirmed Lisi de Bourbon, LPC spokesperson. “It is unusual for us to hold a hearing and then vote on the same day. It was our understanding that the owner was attempting to demolish the building, so there was urgency.”
The building’s current owner – Christopher Morris – had, in fact, applied for a demolition permit the previous Friday. That permit is now impossible for him to get. The neighborhood rumors were that Morris wanted to tear down the building and put up a six-story condo – as current zoning would allow – although Morris himself said no such thing at the hearing. He vaguely reassured everyone that he was willing to “work with people” and seemed resigned to the fact that the landmark designation would probably happen.
The yellow clapboard house on 70 Lefferts Place, between Grand and Classon Avenues, was built in the 1850s by James Elwell, a Manhattan-based shipping magnate. In 1939 the deed transferred to Reverend Major Jealous Divine, the leader of the International Peace Mission Movement, which advocated for racial equality and peace. Since 1919, Father Divine had been hosting lavish Brooklyn banquets, open to the public at little cost, and by the late 1930s he had tens of thousands of followers and enough equity to build the Clinton Hill mansion.
“The Elwell House,” commented Bankoff during his testimony last week, “is a house that has borne witness to the changes that have swept across Brooklyn, and has survived all of them.”
Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, went into some detail about the history of the house and neighborhood: “The notion of Clinton Hill as a commuter suburb within the greater city seems almost alien to us now,” he observed of the area in rapidly gentrifying central Brooklyn.
“By all means it remains a residential neighborhood which by the very nature of our city means it is a commuter area, but one built of the more typical attached rowhouses of Brooklyn, not this elaborate Italianate villa. No, this building harkens back to an earlier antebellum period; which is a justly ironic description considering the home’s later affiliation with Father Divine,” he commented, referring to the fact that the building was built just before this country’s most deadly war occurred, and was later occupied by a famous man of peace.
“It has lived through the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, and the entire 20th century,” he concluded. “There is no reason now to cut the thread.”
Chirstabel Gough, secretary for the Society for the Architecture of the City, wholeheartedly agreed.
“The view of this house,” she testified, “from the corner of Lefferts Place and Grand Avenue is arresting: to see the white cupola and the colossal eaves with their ornate brackets – an elegant expression of the geometry of an earlier age – still standing among the great old trees of Lefferts Place, is a step back in time. It is doubly striking when one learns of the association this house has with the historic leader, Father Divine. The neighborhood is clearly under development pressure, with a large lot for sale next door. While economic activity is welcome, it should not include the demolition of such a fine historic house.”
Courtesy of Tierney and the LPC, Bankoff, Gough and many others have now gotten their wish.