Newsday, July 16, 2000 Preserving the Past Is Queens getting a fair review from city landmarks officials? By Sorah Shapiro More than 200 years ago, a French nobleman who was forced to flee his native country built a huge castle in Long Island City. Although no kings or queens lived there, the palatial mansion was replete with a tower, secret passageways, dungeons and landscaped gardens reaching to the water's edge. Later, learning of a love affair between his daughter and a young worker, the nobleman confined them both to the dungeons. But before the village authorities could arrest him, he retreated to France. The Vernon Boulevard castle, the showplace of Queens County, came into the possession of Col. John Bodine, for whom it was named, and served as a rendezvous for New York aristocracy. Eventually, it was sold to Consolidated Edison. On a day in the mid-1960's, on an evening before Bodine Castle was slated to be designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission as an official landmark, Con Ed demolished it. Even if the enchanted edifice had been landmarked as planned, the commission would not have had the authority to punish the perpetrator. It was not until 1998, when the Landmarks Protection Bill was passed, that the commission was vested with the right to impose penalties against anyone who altered or destroyed landmarked property - meaning it has special historical, cultural or aesthetic value - without the commission's prior approval. Bodine Castle was not the only historic site that was reduced to smithereens. Indeed, between the late 1950's and mid-1960's, the city lost some of its finest architectural gems to a blast-it-down-build-it-up binge that threatened to redefine New York's landscape. "Of all the works of architecture in this country that we would now find worth saving for historic or aesthetic reasons, almost 90 percent have been wantonly destroyed," says Barbaralee Diamonstein, former chairwoman of the commission. In Queens, countless outstanding buildings were demolished to make way for redevelopment. Among them: the old American Airlines Terminal at Kennedy Airport; Floessel's Restaurant in College Point, which was built in 1880; Italian House, an antebellum woodframe house in Old Astoria on 12th Street, and the Herman A. MacNeil house in College Point, home of the famous sculptor. In fact, Queens, the largest of the five boroughs in land area (a quarter of New York City) and more than three centuries old, lags woefully behind the other boroughs in individual landmarks. As opposed to the Bronx's 63, Staten Island's 96, Brooklyn's 127 and Manhattan's 705, Queens has garnered 44. They include Poppenhusen Institute in College Point, the Steinway Mansion in Steinway, the Rufus King Manor in Jamaica, the Louis Armstrong House in Corona, the Latimer House and the Bowne House in Flushing, the TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport and the Unisphere. An often and openly debated question is why Queens has the fewest official landmarks. "Surely this is not because the 300-year history of Queens or the quality of our borough's built environment is somehow less worthy than that of the other boroughs," maintains Jeffery Kroessler, historian of The Queensborough Preservation League. "Rather, it seems that the history and architecture of Queens has been underappreciated and overlooked by the Landmarks Commission and preservation professionals." Even earlier, when townsmen began to agonize over the destruction of important structures, a move toward urban preservation emerged. Humanists, preservationists and architects longed to protect the city's historical and architectural heritage and to assure an unbroken chain of continuity between past and present. They grieved not only for the loss of the beautiful handiwork of man but for the blurring whispers of a bygone era - much like one who mourns over the loss of a loved one. The outcry of concerned citizens over the demolition of Penn Station in 1963 spawned the creation of the New York City Landmarks Commission, which represents the city's commitment to protect treasured fragments from thoughtless redevelopment or modernization and to assure those structures are not needlessly destroyed. To many residents' regret, however, although the commission has designated approximately 933 individual landmarks citywide since its inception, this number represents only about 2 percent of all New York's buildings. As for Queens, Kroessler believes the Landmarks Commission should not judge the borough vis-a-vis Manhattan but on its own merits - its historic structures and fine architecture. He calls upon the commission to preserve the borough before it is destroyed in the name of renewal. "The architectural heritage of Queens is very much threatened," he says. "Any of these buildings can be destroyed at any moment; all that's needed is a permit from the Buildings Department. Queens has already lost too many historic buildings. Its residents have a strong affection for their borough, and many resent the rapid and all-too-final destruction of its historic fabric. The time has come to honor and protect our heritage through landmark designation, instead of thoughtlessly destroying it. The commission has an obligation to designate more than it has done. Demolition, like extinction, is forever." As for why the largest borough boasts so few individual landmarks, Jennifer Raab, chairman of the commission, said, "I cannot answer that." But preservation advocate Paul Graziano professes to know. "The commission is prejudiced against Queens," he asserts, noting that hundreds of buildings that reflect the history and architecture of the borough, as well as at least a dozen districts with hundreds of buildings in each district, should be landmarked. "If not designated immediately, they will be lost forever." Citing the Tisdale Mansion in Flushing and the Triborough Theatre in Astoria as examples of ruthless destruction, Graziano also points to dozens of other sites that were deserving of landmarks but destroyed, or designated and rescinded by the old Board of Estimate. "All the worthy designations have been ignored because of politics and money, because of campaign contributions from the building industry to elected officials. Developers oppose landmarking, because it restricts what they believe to be their divine right to build whatever they want wherever they want," he says. "I have heard these stories anecdotally," acknowledges Raab, who has added several landmarks to Queens since assuming the position of commissioner five years ago. Gene A. Norman, a former commissioner, argues that because so many properties were demolished, "there was no opportunity to designate them as landmarks. Change outstripped our ability to save our patrimony." Others agree. "Queens is a landmark's stepchild and a developer's paradise," laments Queens Historian Stan Cogan. "I feel a deep sense of loss that a structure which so enhanced the heritage and history of Queens can no longer do so, because it's gone." In Cogan's view, failure to landmark deprives the city of a tourist attraction and an opportunity to commemorate its invaluable evolutions. Some of the locations he considers worthy of designation because of their architectural and historical interest are the Hell Gate Bridge, the Queens Council on the Arts Building in Woodhaven and Maspeth Town Hall. On the other hand, according to some industry experts, the preservationist movement that evolved into a commitment to save buildings is not without its drawbacks. "Preservation became the accepted orthodoxy, but once you put the preservationist bureaucracy in place, you find that you are handcuffed," maintains City College professor of architecture Peter Gisolfi, a practicing architect in Hastings-on-Hudson. "New York has not been a preservationist city. The mystery and excitement of New York City has been the complete disregard of the past. Once we start preserving and landmarking everything, we may deprive the city of its essential vitality." go to top