NEWS: Dakota Stables to be demolished
From Preservation Online, the online magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation
NYC Developer Plans to Raze 19th-Century Stables
Story by Margaret Foster / Aug. 23, 2006
On the part of New York City’s Amsterdam Avenue that is known as “stable row,” one of the largest former horse-and-carriage garages could be torn down for upscale condos.
On Monday, the city’s buildings department granted a permit to a New York-based developer to strip the facade from the 125-year-old building, which will prevent the Dakota Stables from gaining landmark status. The Related Companies plans to erect a condominium building designed by Robert A.M. Stern on the site of the parking garage.
“Dakota Stables is a beautiful building and a reminder of how the Upper West Side was developed,” says Peg Breen, president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy. “It’s a shame to lose a building like this to one more overpriced condo development.”
This summer, many politicians and preservationists have asked the city’s landmarks preservation commission to designate the Romanesque revival Dakota Stables and nearby 1889 New York Cab Company Stables, but the commission has not acted.
“I’m very disappointed and upset,” says New York State Senator Tom Duane, who wrote a letter to the commission in suport of the buildings in June. “These are grand Romanesque revival buildings, and there just aren’t very many of them left.”
Now used as parking garages, the two buildings were built to house horses and carriages. The Dakota Stables, designed by Bradford Lee Gilbert and built in 1891, had room for more than 300 carriages and 150 horses. The 12,000-square-foot brick building, one of the largest former stables in the city, was converted to a car garage in 1915.
“People didn’t park their horses on the street like we park our cars,” says Andrew S. Dolkart, a professor of historic preservation at Columbia University. “[Stables] are important building types that we as preservationists have tended to neglect.”
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