Saving Buildings on Staten Island
August seems to be the month for hearings for proposed landmarks in Staten Island. Last August, the Landmarks Preservation Commission heard testimony on nine sites. The Queen Anne, Shingle-style Vanderzee-Harper House and the four houses of Horton’s Row built between 1880 and 1882 were designated by the end of the 2009, while the Greek-revival Mary and David Burgher House and the 1844 Reformed Church on Staten Island, along with its 1898 Sunday School and cemetery which dates back to 1704, were landmarked earlier this year. On Tuesday the two remaining items from last year’s “Staten Island Day”, Christ Church and the Headquarters Troop 51st Calvary Brigade Armory, joined the growing ranks of the borough’s individual landmarks.
Having finished that batch, the LPC heard eight more Staten Island buildings. Four of them, the Rossville A.M.E. Zion Church, 565 and 569 Bloomingdale Road Houses, and the Reverend Isaac and Rebecca Gray Coleman House, are part of Sandy Ground, the community founded by African-American oystermen and their families in the mid-19th century. The potential landmarks met with largely positive testimony including that of Yvonne Taylor, a descendant of Rebecca Gray Coleman and member of the Sandy Ground Historical Society. The Lakeman House, a stone Dutch Colonial style farmhouse that underwent extensive restorative work in 2001-02 and possibly the last 17th-century building on Staten Island to remain un-landmarked, moved a step closer to designation with a favorable hearing as did the Abraham L. Merrill House, described as a rare saltbox farmhouse constructed c.1848. W.T. Garner Mansion, a grand 1860 brownstone Second Empire-style house that was later home to the St. Austin’s Military Academy and St. Vincent’s Hospital, was one of the first buildings on Staten Island considered for landmarking back in 1966. While Staten Island preservationists, and HDC, spoke out in favor of the distinctive building rich with history, the owners, the Richmond University Medical Center, seemed reluctant and requested that the hearing remain open until mid-September, a request that was granted.
The Commission took a look at Brooklyn too with a hearing for the Brooklyn Union Gas Company Building, a piece of the long hoped-for Brooklyn Borough Hall-Skyscraper Historic District, and the calendaring of the proposed Park Slope Historic District Extension, joining Wallabout and Park Place as recently calendared historic districts in that borough.