HDC@LPC Testimony for October 17, 2023

CERTIFICATE OF APPROPRIATENESS TESTIMONY

LPC-24-02141
206 St James Place – Clinton Hill Historic District

CERTIFICATE OF APPROPRIATENESS

A Romanesque Revival style rowhouse designed by Benjamin Wright and built in 1890. Application is to construct a rear yard addition and alter the rear façade.

Architect: James Carse

HDC finds this application appropriate. This applicant’s sensitive approach is a particularly good example of how an architect can work with the existing form of a building to offer clients additional space while maintaining the mass and reading of the building’s original forms.

Action: Unanimously approved

LPC-23-11929
43-45 Cambridge Place – Clinton Hill Historic District

CERTIFICATE OF APPROPRIATENESS

An Anglo-Italianate style rowhouse built c. 1867, and a vacant lot. Application is to construct a side addition, install side and rear decks, and merge the lots.

Architect: Lea Architecture

HDC finds the bulk of this side yard addition appropriate, but we find the detailing of the bay window to be unrelated to either the Anglo-Italianate detailing of the front porch, or to the more modern approach to the rear facade. 

We ask the applicant to work with LPC staff to develop the detailing of the bay window to relate more directly to either the front of the house or the back. 

Action: Unanimously approved with the condition that they work with staff on the detailing

LPC-23-08693
458 Macon Street – Bedford-Stuyvesant/Expanded Stuyvesant Heights Historic District

CERTIFICATE OF APPROPRIATENESS
Renaissance Revival style rowhouse designed by Walter F. Clayton and built c. 1897.
Application is to alter the rear façade.

Architect: Urban Pioneering Architecture

HDC finds this proposal to be inappropriate. 

The proportions of the steel window system are awkward and unrelated to the two-over-two windows on the top floor. 

Further, HDC finds the applicant’s proposal for an industrial roll-down gate on top of their proposed two story rear windows to be completely inappropriate. The applicant’s own precedent images show the gate in use at a strip mall; it is not appropriate for, or meant for, residential use. 

Action: Unanimously approved with the modification that the rear roll down security gate be removed.

LPC-24-00056
229 Baltic Street – Cobble Hill Historic District

CERTIFICATE OF APPROPRIATENESS
An early Italianate and Greek Revivalstyle rowhouse built in c. 1850. Application is to
replace windows.

Architect: Architecture + Construction, PLLC

HDC believes that 2-over-2 windows are the appropriate configuration for this building. We ask LPC to require the applicant to use the correct configuration.

Action: Unanimously approved

LPC-23-08497
45 Murray Street – Tribeca South Historic District Extension

CERTIFICATE OF APPROPRIATENESS
An Italianate style store and lofts building designed by Samuel A. Warner and built c. 1854-55. Application is to remove vault lights and replace the sidewalk.

HDC finds the proposed elimination of vault lights to be inappropriate. The sidewalk can and should be replaced and new vault lights installed to match the original condition.

Action: Unanimously approved

LPC-24-01927
107 Spring Street – SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District

CERTIFICATE OF APPROPRIATENESS
A frame building built prior to 1808. Application is to establish a Master Plan governing the future installation of painted wall signs.

HDC supports signage here, but not at this size and placement. Because this sign is proposed at the ground floor level, HDC believes that a series of smaller signs would be more appropriate than one large sign.

Action: No action

LPC-24-02043
51 Madison Avenue – New York Life Insurance Company Building Individual Landmark

CERTIFICATE OF APPROPRIATENESS
A neo-Gothic style skyscraper designed by Cass Gilbert and built in 1927-28. Application is to install a through-window louver.

Architect: WISS, JANNEY, ELSTNER ASSOCIATES

Given the importance of this building, and the prominence of this facade, we find the proposed position of these louvered units to be awkward and inappropriate. 

HDC notes that the applicant has shown louvered units arranged across a single horizontal band elsewhere on the facade, which we find to be a better solution. 

Action: Unanimously approved

LPC-24-01774
1000 Fifth Avenue – The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Individual and Interior Landmark

BINDING REPORT
A Beaux-Arts and Roman style museum building built in 1864-1965 and designed by Vaux and Mould, R.M. Hunt, McKim Mead and White, and others; with designated interior spaces including an entrance vestibule, the Great Hall, a passageway, corridors, the Grand Staircase, halls, balconies, and all vaults and domes above these halls and balconies, designed by Richard Morris Hunt and Richard Howland Hunt, with consulting architect George B. Post, and built in 1895-1902. Application is to install interior digital display screens

Architect: Beyer, Blinder, Belle

HDC has no specific objection to these signs, but we note that there is an accumulation of seemingly disparate signage in the Great Hall. We encourage LPC and the Met to investigate a more coherent approach to signage in the near future.

Action: Unanimously approved