NEWS: El Diaro Supports PS 64 Landmarking
From El Diaro: http://www.eldiariony.com/noticias/detail.aspx?section=25&desc=Editorial&id=1385826
PS 64 should be named a landmarkEDITORIAL – 05/10/2006
A state appellate judge has halted a developer`s plan to remove the Beaux Arts facade of the old PS 64 building on the Lower East Side, at least for now. The decision gives hope to a coalition of community groups and politicians who want the city to designate the building a landmark.
We support their efforts. Next Tuesday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission is scheduled to consider whether to convey landmark status on the building on East Ninth Street that for many years was home to the Charas/ El Bohío Cultural Center. The building deserves landmark status.
If developer Gregg Singer had been allowed to proceed, he would have effectively removed the principal features that make the building architecturally significant. It`s the latest episode in the neighborhood`s efforts to save a building that is important architecturally and historically and that the city has stipulated should be a community facility.
The school was designed by architect Charles B.J. Snyder built in 1904. In the 1920s the school was a popular campaign stop for politicians including President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But by the 1970s it had been closed and abandoned.
Then people in the surrounding community gave it new life when they established Charas/ El Bohio, a center for Puerto Rican and Latino artists. But in 1998 the Giuliani administration auctioned off the building to Singer.
The state has already determined that the building is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. As U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez pointed out in a letter to the city landmarks commission, historic buildings and community gardens are being razed to make room for luxury housing. We are losing structures and institutions that are an important part of our history. We urge the city Landmarks Preservation Commission to save this building so that it can once again serve as a cultural and social hub for the Lower East Side community.