NEWS: One less landmark in Queens?
From the New York Times
January 28, 2007
Richmond Hill
Where Dignitaries Spoke, Bad Beams and Frail Walls
By JEFF VANDAM
The words “Republican Club” remain in arched black letters above the four-columned entrance to the Colonial Revival structure in the Richmond Hill neighborhood in Queens, but the building’s paint is peeling badly.
Ornate black lanterns that once flanked the center doorway of the building have been snapped off, the door itself covered by an old piece of plywood on which someone has scrawled a peace sign in brown crayon. The half-circle of brick steps is a moss colony, and just one tenant name, “Safari Archery,” remains on the shell of a buzzer, hollowed out long ago.
No one is allowed to enter the 1908 building on Lefferts Boulevard near Hillside Avenue. A protected landmark despite its near-death condition, it is unsafe, and there are growing concerns that it may collapse. The old Simonson Funeral Home next door is being demolished, and some fear the coming vibrations may be too much for the club.
“The Republican Club is in such delicate condition that any shaking from excavation could damage the building,” said Mary Ann Carey, district manager for Community Board 9. The city’s Buildings Department closely monitors the demolition of structures next to designated landmarks, said Lisi de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The last time anyone looked inside the club, formerly a nonpartisan meeting center, bar, post office, political boiler room and bowling alley, the disarray was astounding. Pictures show jagged chunks missing from the ornate tin ceiling. A rotting piano remained on a floor of junk, set against a sagging, broken wall of wood beams.
Collapse would prove an ignominious end for the club. In its heyday, it served as both a hub for Richmond Hill social life and a way station for Republican candidates obscure and celebrated, from the 1940s Queens Republican leader Warren Ashmead to Ronald Reagan, who appeared there during his 1980 campaign.
In 1974, a rally to support President Nixon ended in a hail of eggs thrown at the club’s doors and four arrests, after anti-Nixon demonstrators got rowdy.
Now, the Republicans are long gone from the club, having abandoned it in the 1980s. Ownership of the building is in dispute by heirs of the original club members, said Nancy Cataldi, president of the Richmond Hill Historical Society, who added that few aside from preservationists were looking after the property.
Because of the building’s landmark status, she said, developers show little interest in buying it, especially considering a $700,000 tax lien. Her group’s only hope is that the city might take it over and revive it as a community center, the role it once filled so well.
“We’re hoping for that,” Ms. Cataldi said, “because if it goes up for auction, I can’t see anyone in their right mind buying it.”