NEWS: Former Queens Boro Hall Doomed
From the New York Daily News
Historic building doomed
BY DONALD BERTRAND
Thursday, January 18th, 2007
Another relic of Queens’ storied history – a 19th-century building that was once home to Queens Borough Hall – is slated to fall to the wreckers’ ball this month.
Plans call for the Hackett Building, situated on a triangular lot at the corner of Jackson Ave. and 49th St., to be replaced by an eight-story luxury condominium. The Buildings Department issued the required demolition permit on Jan 2.
The work will begin in the next one to two weeks and should take about a month to complete, said Jover Naranjo of Gladiators Contracting Corp. in Jackson Heights.
Neighborhood residents upset with the plans tried to get the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to save the structure.
“Its really disappointing; the neighborhood is losing a very valuable historical building,” said Talitha Whidbee, who once ran a cafe on the ground floor of the Hackett Building. “More than 100 of us requested that the Landmarks Commission evaluate the property, but the Department of Buildings issued the [demolition] permit before Landmarks could act.”
However, said Landmarks spokeswoman Elisabeth de Bourbon “We reviewed it and determined it did not rise to the level of an individual New York City landmark.”
“[The building] has been altered over time and its integrity has been significantly compromised by major storefront alterations – making it impossible for us to consider it for designation,” de Bourbon said.
Community Board 2 chairman Joe Conley said he met with owner Perry Fine to see what could be done to save a part of the building, which served as Queens Borough Hall from 1898 to 1916.
The building once housed a large department store, O. Demarest & Co. In 1898, it was made the seat of the Queens County government, when the Borough President’s Office moved in and stayed until 1916.
However, in the decades since, “the integrity of the building on the inside has pretty much deteriorated,” said Conley. “What we have asked them to do is to try and preserve something from the outside because it was the first Borough Hall.”
Conley said he also talked to Fine about the possibility of installing a plaque to commemorate the site’s status as a former Borough Hall.
Fine, a principal of Triangle Services in Manhattan, did not return phone calls.