Some Sunnyside Residents Continue to Complain
Some people are never happy. That a city agency is checking its work with citizens and residents should be applauded, not derided. And what’s not being reported here is the fact that LPC had been chased away during their surveys by some of the same people now complaining.
June 24, 2007
Sunnyside
Who’s Calling That a Peaked Roof?
By JEFF VANDAM
Last fall, employees of the Landmarks Preservation Commission began canvassing the streets of Sunnyside Gardens, a small enclave in western Queens, armed with pens, notepads and cameras. Their goal was to record detailed descriptions of the area’s tidy red-brick 1920s row houses — mostly Art Deco and colonial revival, some with bay windows and peaked roofs — in preparation for a decision on whether to designate the area as a historic district that is set for Tuesday.
Yet when residents of the 624 houses that fall within the proposed district received the commission’s descriptions, some saw inaccuracies in what would become a permanent record of their homes. The agency has received about 40 letters from homeowners who fear that if the district is designated, they may get into trouble down the line for adding features that had been there all along.
“I panicked,” said Nancy Mangan, a lifelong Sunnyside Gardens resident who lives on 48th Street. She wrote to the agency that her house does indeed have a storm door, there is a light above that door, and a curb bordering her garden is made of scalloped green brick, not concrete.
The residents’ complaints were reported last week in The Times Ledger, a chain of weekly newspapers.
According to a spokeswoman for the landmarks commission, the complaints and revisions are part of the process. The spokeswoman, Lisi de Bourbon, explained that the agency’s employees could see houses only from the vantage point of public property like sidewalks and could not always get an up-close view.
But Ira Greenberg, a lawyer for the Preserve Sunnyside Gardens Coalition, a group that opposes the historic district because of the restrictions that would be placed on construction, sees the inaccuracies as a sign that the designation is more trouble than it is worth.
Mr. Greenberg has made several corrections to the description of the three-story house, with a peaked roof covered with slate shingles, in which he has lived for 12 years, including the fact that his basement windows do not have three panes apiece.
“As we go through this process,” he said, “it reminds me that it doesn’t make much sense.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company