Rooftop Addition Work Resumed on proposed landmark Hopper Gibbons Abolitionist House
From Fern Luskin & Julie Finch
May 7, 2009, 10:50am
Work has resumed on the rooftop of the Hopper Gibbons House.
Detail showing yellow paneling (insulation?) enclosing the 5th Floor.
Ironically, at the very moment the Historic Districts Council is honoring the Friends of the Hopper-Gibbons Underground Railroad Site and Lamartine Place Historic District for their grassroots preservation campaign (tonight at 6 p.m.),*the current owners of the Hopper-Gibbons house at no. 339 W. 29th St. Street have been granted a new (apparently self-certified) building permit by the Department of Buildings to vertically and horizontally enlarge this 4 story row house and to construct a penthouse. For two days there was a cement mixer in their front yard and, today, I woke up to the reality that the owners have begun to enclose the illegal, fifth story. This makes it a full story higher than the neighboring row houses and is contrary to the sliver law, as indicated by the Department of Building’s own audit of the property. In addition, the Landmarks Preservation Commission is actively considering a historic district designation for this portion of the block, which will protect its architecture from further degradations – showing that the City is dedicated to preserving this area.
The reasons it is so urgent that we prevent this heightening of the building to go forward are twofold. First of all, Abigail Hopper Gibbons and James Sloan Gibbons who resided at no. 339 W. 29th St. (formerly 19 Lamartine-Place) in the 1850s and 1860s were prominent Quaker abolitionists whose home on 29th Street served as an Underground Railroad Station. This family heroically sheltered an untold number of African-American slaves who were escaping to Canada, as documented in letter written by their close friend, the renowned lawyer, Joseph Hodges Choate. They were, in other words, the Schindlers of their day. Because of their well-known abolitionist views, their home on 29th St. was specifically targeted by the mob for destruction during the Draft Riots of 1863, as indicated by numerous letters, police reports, insurance claims, etc. The family escaped from the raging mob by running over the rooftops of the neighboring buildings. The construction of an additional 5th story and a penthouse at no. 339 will forever destroy the uniform roof level of all the row houses on the western end of the block that enabled this family to flee to safety. Secondly, the builder’s plans to hydraulically jack up this building and their construction of steel girders atop the old bricks, with no bracing, threatens the contiguous antebellum row houses, all built 1846-1847.
I hope you can attend the Historic Districts Council Awards Ceremony tonight to get the full story, which is now dramatically unfolding:
* Thurs., May 7th, 6 pm
St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery
Garden and Parish Hall
East 10th St. and Second Avenue
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