LPC Declares Fillmore Place Historic

The Landmark Preservation Commission voted unanimously yesterday to make Fillmore Place in Williamsburg a historic district. The one-block street holds 29 mid-19th-century rowhouses, including Henry Miller's boyhood home, which will now be protected from any major alterations. The LPC's chairman told the Brooklyn Paper they were “Constructed for working class-tenants, the architecture of the buildings in this district has more in common with fashionable middle- and upper-class single-family rowhouses than the tenements that were typically built to house them. The district is an evocative reminder of this period in Brooklyn’s history.” Last year there was a machete attack on the block, but hopefully this designation will shine a positive light on what Miller himself once called “the most enchanting street I have ever seen in all my life."