Landmarks Approves Eight New Sites for Historic Status

The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted yesterday to landmark eight new sites in four of the city's boroughs - the Bronx loses out. City Room details the new landmarks, which include the Lord & Taylor building, the white brick Manhattan House, two homes on Grand St., the Standard Varnish Works Factory building (its owner thinks the designation is bad for business) and the Greek-Revival style Fillette Tyler Mansion in Staten Island and the Voelker-Orth Museum, Bird Sanctuary and Victorian Garden in Queens. There's a more detailed account of LPC's hearing on Monday here. East Village institutions like Webster Hall and the brick and terra-cotta 11th St. bathhouse, among others, are proposed for designation. The Sun's Eliot Brown has more.

LPC also approved the designation of the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District, which includes properties along Greenpoint and Kent avenues and West St. According to Brownstoner, one commissioner said that "development fever is raging through the neighborhood—as well as fires—so the sooner this is protected, the better." Dumbo's designation as a historic district is just a matter of time. LPC votes are subject to City Council approval.

AMNY has the numbers. The city now has 24,000 landmarked properties, with 1,180 being stand-alone ones, and 89 historic districts. In the last year alone, 1,158 buildings received protection. Here's NY Landmarks Conservancy spokesman Roger Lang:

"The fear of over-development was very clear in today's hearings," Lang said. "We want to use landmark status to ensure development is done appropriately."

Speaking of development, NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff has a write-up of MoMA's recent colloquium, "Women in Modernism," which looked at the role of women in modern architectural history. Lindy Roy, Annabelle Selldorf and Winka Dubbeldam are the New York stand-outs, aside from those members of the husband-and-wife teams, which Ouroussoff unnecessarily dismisses.