Review and Comment: Snowed
This is not about the snowfall that finally arrived last Saturday. It is about the Landmarks Preservation Commission being too easily fooled by unimaginative building designs that vaguely echo 19th century styles. It is about a Landmarks Commission that doesn’t understand that “context” means a place in history as well as a resemblance to past examples. As Linda Collins reports, Landmarks has now approved, with slight modifications, the dismally bland 5-story apartment building replacing the former Brooklyn Eagle offices at 30 Henry Street. And, with another such possibly coming two blocks away to replace the Heights Cinema on the Orange Street corner, we may be in for another Landmarks charade.
As was pointed out in last week’s editorial here, the actual context for 30 Henry — and also for the Heights Cinema site — isn’t 19th century at all. This stretch of Henry Street is characterized by the Hotel St. George, the Cranlyn apartments, the Cadman Towers, and the Whitman Close townhouses — all examples of 20th century styles. A historic district isn’t one in which all buildings are frozen in a small segment of time. To begin with, what made the case for Brooklyn Heights as a historic district was the large number of good examples of buildings true to the best of their own particular periods. To be historically correct, any new buildings should also reflect the time they are built in. The Cranlyn apartments, for instance, at the corner of Henry and Cranberry Streets, well exemplify the Art Deco style of ca. 1930 when they were built. The Whitman Close townhouses are an interesting take on post-World War II Modernism.
The responsibility for building new in a historic district is not to erect the cheapest “contextual” imitation, but to respect both the quality and the period the new structure will represent. The Landmarks lawyer who argued at the hearing on 30 Henry that “There is nothing in the law to require a developer to build in a particular style” had it only half right. “Anything goes” is clearly not acceptable in a historic district, or the Landmarks Commission wouldn’t even need to pass on new construction there. Judgment of quality is obviously part of the commission’s mandate, and it is within its rights to require respectable, not just timidly “respectful,” architecture. The issue of what is properly “contextual” has bedeviled preservationists for the last few decades, and there is no simple one-style solution. On that score, the lawyer had a point, but the other point is that there should be serious evaluation of such considerations as effectiveness on the site, interplay with neighbors (whether by resemblance or contrast), quality of detailing, and, yes, imagination.