3 New Sorts of Landmarks Designatedin City (original) (raw)
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- Nov. 14, 1974
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The handsome three‐story main lobby of the New York Public Library has been designated as a city landmark.
It was the first interior to win such designation and, the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission announced yesterday, was one of three “historic” designations.
The others were the following.
¶The first Public housing project to be named a landmark—First Houses at Avenue A and Second Street, which was dedicated in 1935 as the nation's first low‐income public housing project.
¶The first modern skyscraper to be designated a landmark—the American Radiator Building, at 40 West 40th Street.
Landmark status—which is subject to approval by the City Planning Commission and the Board of Estimate—means that a building so designated may not be altered without the approval of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The libary's main lobby, The library was designed by Carrer & Hastings.
Of the First Houses, Beverly Moss Spatt, the commission chairman, said: “In this designation we honor a great social experiment—the responsibility of society to provide for every human being decent housing with in a high quality humane environment.” The architect for First Houses was Frederick L. Ackerman.
The American Radiator Building was described as “a striking 23‐story black and gold tower, one of the finest and most significant skyscrapers in Manhattan.”
Mrs. Spatt said that the commission also voted on Tuesday to make five other designations, bringing the total of individual city landmarks to 443, along with the one interior, three scenic landmarks and 25 historic districts.
The exterior of the library building, at Fifth Avenue and 42d Street, described by the commission as “one of them masterpieces of the beauxarts style of architecture and a magnifitent civic Monument,” already has been given landinark status.
“The minterlir of this great building is as Magnifieent as its exterior,” the commission said in yesterday's report. “Among its notable interior spaces readily available to the public are the main lobby, the north and south staircases from the first to the third floor and the central hall on the third floor.”
The commission announcement said of the First Houses: “Begun as an experiinental program in partial demolition and rehabilitation of existing tenements on the site, it opened up this block to light and air. Its dedication on Dec. 3, 1935, in the depths of the Depression was a momentus occasion.”
The commission's announcement said that the American Radiator Building, designed by Raymond M. Hood, “initiated a new trend in skyscrapers with its bold cubic massing of forms.”
The designation of the American Radiator Building may be the first in a series of skyscraper designations, since pressure to declare many of the city's skyscrapers official landmarks has grown rapidly in recent years. Preservationists have only recently come to consider many of the city's most fanious skyscrapers, built in the nineteen‐twenties and nineteen‐thirties, as hisloric buildings.
Mrs. Spatt said: “The New York, skyscraper is a building type that has, made this city knofn to all the world. Our first designation of this modern skyscraper is a great addition to the roster of landmarks that individually and collectively represent the best of our city.”
In the other designations announced yesterday the commission chose the following.
¶Bryant Park, between 40th and 42d Streets, as a connecting urban link between the two landmarks designated yesterday, the American Radiator Building and the New York Public Library.
¶The Gage & Tollner Restaurant, at 372 Fulton Street in Brooklyn; a four‐Story building dating from the mid eighteen seventies. The restaurant has a high painted wooden storefront and a large front window that was described by Mrs spatt as “an archive of the social business and political life of Brooklyn.”
¶The Jamaican Savings Bank, at 161‐02 Jamaica Avenue, Jamaica, Queens described as an excellent example of the beaux‐arts style of architecture.
¶The Register Jamaica Arts Center, at 161‐04 Jamaica Avenue, described as a “handsome neo‐Italian Renaissance building.”
¶The site of the Frick Collection, at 70th Street and Fifths Avenue, Which was exteded to includ lots to the east of some that had already been designated.
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