Despite Its Historic Neighborhoods, Queens Has Few Historic Districts Designations
November27, 2003— Queens Courier
By James Fanelli
Throughout Queens in neighborhoods like College Point, Richmond Hill and Flushing, developers are buying up property at an increasingly rapid pace. The effect, residents say, is a drastic revision of their neighborhood’s appearance and an erasure of its distinguishing features.
The cause, as last week’s issue of The Queens Courier reported, was due to lax zoning regulations that were instituted in 1961. Budgeting for the population increase and a disinclination to spot zoning, the City Planning Commission zoned many single-family home neighborhoods for much higher densities. As a result, developers have bought up these houses in popular residential areas, only to knock them down and erect multi-family dwellings that do not fit contextually with the rest of the neighborhood.
"They drew these lines thirty or forty years ago but they don’t reflect what is there today," said Paul Graziano, an urban planner and preservationist who lives in Flushing and is trying to protect his and other neighborhoods from further development.
With funding from District Council 19, Graziano is conducting a survey of northeast Queens. He’s gathering an arsenal of information that neighborhoods can use to combat the non-contextual trend or, as he puts it, that will help "make new development fit in with existing development."
Since July, he has examined non-contextual zoning in northeast Queens, researched restrictive deeds on houses - a useful tool that outweighs zoning regulations - and pinpointed sections that could be designated historic districts. Historic district designation is the most powerful weapon in a neighborhood’s panoply. To get this designation, though, it must go through the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Once a neighborhood becomes a historic district, any construction or development, minor or major, must be vouchsafed by the commission. For minor repairs, like changing a house color or small renovation work, a homeowner must apply to the commission for a certificate of no effect, which allows work to proceed. In this case, a commission staff member determines whether to permit the work. However, for a major addition or development, there must be a public hearing and the applicant must go before a board headed by the commission’s chairperson and a group of volunteers who listen to the case.
Though it’s a coveted designation, becoming a historic district is difficult. The Landmarks Preservation Commission has chosen few in Queens - out of 83 historic districts throughout the city only five are in the borough: Douglaston, Hunters Point, Jackson Heights, Stockholm Street in Ridgewood and Fort Totten. Comparatively, Graziano, in northeast Queens alone, has found 24 sections he considers worthy of the designation.
"Landmarks was closed-minded to anything outside of Manhattan," complained Nancy Cataldi, president of the Richmond Hill Historical Society, about her experience with the city agency.
She tried for seven years to obtain historic district designation for Richmond Hill - the first planned community in Queens, distinguished by its single-family detached Victorian houses that sit back from the street and offer a homeowner an ample amount of lawn space.
Neighborhood residents - like Cataldi - community groups and staff members of the commission can make requests for an evaluation of an area or individual building for possible designation. The commission then reviews the application, without any dialogue with the community involved, and sends a letter to notify the applicants of their decision.
Cataldi’s historical society, with the backing of Councilman Dennis Gallagher, submitted a request for an evaluation of clusters of Richmond Hill last year, but the Landmarks Preservation Commission decided against the recommendation.
"In the past, the Landmarks Preservation Commission, in my mind, was too Manhattan-centric," said Councilman Dennis Gallagher. "They were never willing to give outer-borough districts a look, even though they were clearly worthy."
Though the commission eventually designated the Republican Club in Richmond Hill a landmark, Cataldi and Gallagher still want the historic district designation.
"It’s difficult for any neighborhood," said Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, a non-profit preservation and advocacy group that provides technical assistance to groups, about the trouble of getting a designation. "It seems to be a particular problem in more suburban areas."
Bankoff notes that though the commission has been slow in the past to recognize Queens - for more than 25 years Hunters Point was the only area with the status - the borough’s neighborhoods are slowly being designated. Since 1995 three neighborhoods have gotten historic district status: Fort Totten, Douglas Manor and Jackson Heights. But, as for Richmond Hill, Bankoff said, there is no excuse for the Landmark Preservation Commission turning it down.
Bankoff, whose organization is currently advising Queens neighborhoods about the process, gave a few reasons why Manhattan has the preponderance of historic districts. Row houses have an easier time getting passed, he said, because architects and historians have been trained to realize their importance. In a suburban setting, though, there are fewer row houses and more single-family detached homes. Moreover, Bankoff said, buildings made of stone rather than wood are held in higher esteem.Wooden houses and buildings are also more likely to be repaired and have parts replaced, depleting their historical significance. Stone buildings, however, have a much longer lifespan.
Though not in vogue now with the commission, Bankoff said Queens should not be completely discouraged. Appreciation and taste for architecture changes over time, he said. Buildings presently denied designation may get the nod later on. For example, in 1965, when the Landmark Law passed, no one on the commission liked art deco. But, Bankoff said, though it took a bit of time, an appreciation grew. "Can you imagine New York City without Rockefeller Center?" Bankoff asked.
Yet, even if a neighborhood makes it past the first round, the designation process can, according to those who have gone through it, be discouraging. After the initial round, a Designation Committee, consisting of five commissioners, will then review the request. A public hearing must also be held. Then the City Council must vote on a final report from the Designation Committee.
"It’s a long torturous process," said Kevin Wolfe, an architect and Douglas Manor resident, who worked for nine years starting in 1989 to get historic district status for his neighborhood, before the commission streamlined the application process in 1998.
He and other residents feared his neighborhood would succumb to the same fate as Malba, where developers would, as he put it, "flip a house," or purchase homes only to replace them with non-contextual ones.
Wolfe said that it was not just a matter of persuading the Landmarks Preservation Commission but also residents wary of parting ways with some of the freedom they have in building and renovating their homes. Moreover, the city councilman at the time, Mike Abel, also refused to back the campaign unless the majority of the community agreed.
"It’s a process that involves politicking, researching and educating," he said.
Eventually, after holding education forums, most residents signed on. The watershed moment, though, came when residents started to see Wolfe’s development concerns become tangible realities, or as he explained it, when buildings were torn down and replaced by "yellow brick monster houses."
To get Abel’s support, Wolfe and others involved in the process mailed postcards to approximately 650 homes. Residents checked off whether they were pro or con for the historic district designation and sent it to the councilman’s office. Only three of the postcards he received were opposed to a historic district.
