CIVITAS in Action

Recycling Program Launches at P.S. 007 

October 29th marked launch day for a major CIVITAS schools recycling initiative at P.S. 007 and Global Tech in East Harlem. As part of its three-pronged recycling initiative, CIVITAS committed to a pilot program in East Harlem through collaboration with another non-profit, Cafeteria Culture (CafCu). This collaboration immersed board members in the CafCu methodology and helped CIVITAS learn the how and why of cafeteria recycling. Board members were directly involved in both the classroom, helping to teach a recycling curriculum, and in the cafeteria, implementing the sorting for recycling methodology alongside students. CIVITAS is using this experience to determine how to push forward in its mission to increase recycling rates in schools in East Harlem. In the process, CIVITAS accumulated the necessary information to write its own guidebook for future school recycling initiatives, and hopes to use this knowledge to move forward in a role that motivates student and administrator involvement in the service of increasing recycling and becoming better wardens of the environment. 

Park Avenue Historic District Extension 

CIVITAS supports the nomination of Park Avenue between 79th and 96th Street to be designated a New York City historic district. Except for a few blocks of Park Avenue located in the Carnegie Hill Historic District, most of this corridor between 79th and 96th Street does not fall within a historic district. CIVITAS supports the work of numerous community groups who have worked for years to achieve landmark protection for the historic Park Avenue corridor. The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) has calendared a hearing for February 11, 2014. 

Park Avenue Christian Church 

The LPC calendaring of a hearing for the Park Avenue Historic District suspends any changes to buildings in the proposed district that includes the Park Avenue Christian Church at 1010 Park Avenue, which had been under threat of demolition. The Extell Corporation has filed plans for a 210-foot tower to occupy the portion of the lot where the parish house is currently located and to cantilever over the church building. CIVITAS has written a letter in support of the individual landmark designation of the Park Avenue Christian Church complex, which includes the church and parish house because of its cultural and historical significance. 

Update: East River Esplanade Initiative 

CIVITAS is moving forward to hire a planning and outreach consultant for the East River Esplanade project. The study area for the project is the East River Esplanade between 60th and 125th Streets and the objective is to help CIVITAS bring Upper East Side and East Harlem residents together to plan for improvements of the Esplanade park. We are grateful to the New York Community Trust and other funders for supporting this project. 

This fall, CIVITAS’s Reimagining the Waterfront exhibition was on display at the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House. Workshops were held with children from the afterschool program and adults from the Senior Center. The workshops taught participants about community based planning and CIVITAS’s Esplanade improvement initiative. 

Students at the Allen-Stevenson School learn about the importance of city planning with CIVITAS’s Environmental Associate Maura Smotrich. 

Additionally, CIVITAS’s Environmental Associate, Maura Smotrich, gave a presentation to second graders at The Allen-Stevenson School on the process of urban planning and led a discussion about the importance of understanding what is needed when building a city. The students are working on a unit in their art class that teaches them to build their own city. CIVITAS’s Reimagining the Waterfront exhibit is on display for public viewing at City Swiggers located at 320 East 86th Street. 

The Dalton School Expansion 

In January, the Board of Standards and Appeal (BSA) approved The Dalton School’s variance request to build a two-story addition atop its main building at 108-114 East 89th Street. CIVITAS had written a letter in opposition to the request for variance to the BSA. The current proposal, the third variance requested by The Dalton School, seeks to further amend the variance by increasing the height from 144 feet to 170 feet. This application proposes a floor area expansion of about 12,200 gross square feet, representing a floor area ratio (FAR) of 9.67, though the area’s R8B zoning allows only a 5.1 FAR for community facilities. 

City Council Votes to Ban Styrofoam 

The New York City Council unanimously voted to ban toxic and polluting styrene foam! This landmark decision is a victory for our environment, health and future. CIVITAS weighed in on the debate with other non-profits pushing for the ban by testifying at the City Council hearing about the environmental dangers of polystyrene products. The collaborative effort yielded a far-reaching environmental win. 

CIVITAS President Felipe Ventegeat and Vice President Gorman Reilly stand with Public Advocate Letitia James in support of the City Council’s vote to ban styrofoam. 

In The Community: NYCHA Land Lease 

In August, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) issued a request for expression of interest (R.F.E.I) for 99-year land leases to build new housing within existing housing sites to potential developers interested in the sites. NYCHA infill plans are for eight of its housing sites including two in Community District 11, Washington and Carver Houses. The Housing Authority believes this controversial plan is the best way to provide necessary funding for tens of millions of dollars’ worth of building repairs across the city. Proposals were due in November and developers have yet to be selected. It is still unclear whether Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has been highly critical of the initiative, but has not voiced total opposition to a land use program, will take action to stop or modify the plan. 

To read the complete Winter 2014 issue of CIVITAS News, visit http://civitasnyc.org/civitas-newsletters/

Park Avenue: Historic, Iconic, and Only Partly Protected

By Lucienne S. Bloch

Prepared for the CIVITAS Fall 2010 Newsletter

CIVITAS has joined our neighborhood partners Carnegie Hill Neighbors and Historic Park Avenue in supporting an application to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission for historic designation for Park Avenue from 79th Street to 96th Street. Park Avenue between 63rd Street and 79th received local historic designation in 1981. At present, only a few blocks of the avenue between 86th Street and 96th Street fall within the boundaries of the Carnegie Hill Historic District. In June 2010, the New York State Historic Preservation Office determined Park Avenue between 79th Street and 96th Street to be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, and that application is under way. A listing on the State and National Registers is more of an honorific title than a locally protective measure for historical structures, but it does add a layer of review for proposed alterations that receive state or federal funding.

Historic Designation: For and Against

Local historic designation for Park Avenue to 96th Street is long overdue, and a matter of some urgency to many people who see the all-too-obvious outcome of non-designation, as demonstrated on both eastern corners of 87th Street. One is the site of a new entirely glass-fronted building that is glaringly insensitive to the look and feel of the avenue. The other is a tower in a plaza that was completed in 1974 and is hugely out of scale with its surroundings. The publicized and unstoppable plans for that tower spurred the better-late-than-never establishment of the Park Improvement Special District in 1973. The district set standards for building height and adherence to the avenue’s predominant streetwall, although it doesn’t protect low-rise 19th and early 20th century buildings from demolition or radical face-lifting.

Some of the arguments that have been used against landmark status include: the time and expense of additional bureaucratic paperwork for building permits, and of committee review of exterior alterations that must be historically appropriate; the stringent contextual regulations for new buildings that may preclude opportunities for innovative architecture; stricter city building codes that may mandate and enforce sustainable design in construction and building maintenance, as well as eco-friendly retrofits of older buildings. These are cogent issues, but they don’t address another reasonable bottom line: the past matters, especially in a city that has only patches of its irreplaceable historic fabric still standing.

It is Time to Get the Job Done

The grounds for Park Avenue’s historic designation are visible and compelling. Apart from 19th century mansions and row houses, small flats buildings, religious and educational institutions, Lenox Hill Hospital, and the Seventh Regiment Armory, residential Park Avenue from 63rd to 96th Streets is pretty much all of a piece. Most of the apartment houses were constructed between 1913 and World War II. Different noted architects designed buildings with entrances, cornices and ornamentation in different idioms, Georgian, Italian Renaissance Revival, and Art Deco among them, but the similarity of height, 12 to 17 stories, and of building materials, stone and brick, on both sides of the broad boulevard gives Park Avenue an overall and palpable coherence. There is a sense of harmonious scale on residential Park Avenue, and a sense of place that has both historic and architectural significance. Several of the 19th century structures belong to the wide avenue’s past as a busy open rail corridor with at-grade tracks in the middle of it. Between 1871 and 1877, a tunnel was constructed for the lowered tracks from 97th Street to Grand Central Depot, bridges were built over the sunken tunnel for pedestrians and vehicles, and row houses and tenements sprang up along the still-gritty avenue. The tunnel wasn’t covered over until 1913, when the new and present Grand Central Station was completed. At that time, the median malls were landscaped with grass, trees, paths and benches, transforming the newly parklike avenue into a prime area for luxury apartment houses, and soon making it the world-famous iconic boulevard we know today.

Park Avenue between 63rd and 79th Streets has been landmarked for over a quarter of a century. It is time to finish the job by designating the entire stretch of residential Park Avenue to 96th Street. This will make it possible for future generations to enjoy its architectural quality and balance, its historic allure that evokes the early and still important connection between transportation and urban development, and its continuing presence in a constantly changing city.

Statement before the Landmarks Committee of Community Board 8

in Support of Proposed Designation of the Park Avenue Historic District

Between 79th and 96th Street

June 14, 2010

CIVITAS supports the nomination of Park Avenue between 79th and 96th Street to be designated a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places and as a New York City local historic district.

Park Avenue is one of the world’s most famous thoroughfares and is well regarded for its central median, lined by stately apartment buildings, low-rise nineteenth century buildings and houses of worship. Yet almost half of the avenue on the Upper East Side is not protected by landmark status. Except for a few blocks of Park Avenue located in the Carnegie Hill Historic District, most of this corridor between 79th and 96th Street does not fall within a New York City historic district.

Park Avenue is best known as a twentieth century streetscape as it rose to prominence in the 1910s and 1920s. Yet it has a significant nineteenth century layer as well, including several buildings that pre-date “Park Avenue” itself and were constructed when this thoroughfare was known as Fourth Avenue, before the railroad tracks were covered. The avenue’s predominant scale – 12-17 story apartment buildings that follow a uniform street wall—is mostly protected under the Park Improvement special zoning district. But this offers no protection to the nineteenth century layer, which is increasingly threatened. At least two of these structures have been demolished in recent years.

The architectural character of Park Avenue is not just about scale. The architects who designed many of the proposed district’s greatest buildings—George and Edward Blum, Rosario Candela, J.E.R. Carpenter, and others—followed a relatively uniform bulk in designing the luxury apartment houses. Much of the designers’ individual expression is articulated through architectural details, such as windows, decorative medallions and door surrounds. The structures present a wonderfully eclectic face to the avenue, evoking Renaissance Revival, Art Deco and Georgian references. Designation of Park Avenue as a New York City historic district will protect those details for future generations to enjoy.

As part of our support, CIVITAS raises the following issues for consideration by the United States Department of the Interior, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

First is the historical condition of the Park Avenue median. When the railroad tracks were covered in the 1880s and the landscaped median was created in the 1910s, it was a wide park with seating and meandering paths located in the middle of the avenue. Over the course of the twentieth century, the median has been whittled down to its current width, a “park” meant to be looked at but not entered and enjoyed. As the current movement in New York City continues to reclaim green space and public space in previously overlooked spaces, we would like to see additional thought given to restoring Park Avenue to its historical plan and configuration with a public park in its center. Designation as a National Register or New York City historic district should call special attention to the avenue’s original plan and not act as an impediment to possible restoration of the median.

Further, there is much discussion on the local and national level devoted to incorporating energy efficient components into historic structures. Preserving the “embedded energy” expended in constructing the historic buildings on Park Avenue represent the greenest approach there is, but we would like to see continued dialogue between the preservation and environmental communities to support eco-friendly upgrades that respect the aesthetics and historic integrity of Park Avenue’s buildings.

We encourage the United States Department of the Interior, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to move quickly in designating the Park Avenue corridor between 79th and 96th Street.