Downtown Home Could Be Given Landmark Status

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The New York Sun

A public hearing is taking place this morning on a townhouse that borders the World Trade Center site and could become the first individual building downtown to be designated a landmark since the attacks of September 11, 2001.


The Landmarks Preservation Commission is holding the planned hearing on 67 Greenwich Street. The commission has not yet set a date to vote on whether to designate the home a landmark.


The building was constructed around the time America won its independence. During the Federal era, when the Constitution was new and downtown Manhattan was home to Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Franklin Roosevelt, lower Greenwich Street was the most fashionable address for wealthy merchants. The owners of the three-story home with a high peaked roof and Flemish bond brickwork, Robert and Anne Dickey, lived on the upper floors until 1820, selling goods from a store in the rear.


The home, at the mouth of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, has flat stone lintels, or structural supports for the entry, on the front facade, and an elliptical bow on three of the five bays of the rear garden facade.


In its statement of significance, the Landmarks Preservation Commission said the home is the only surviving Federal-style row houses in Manhattan that has a bowed facade, a popular feature of the era, because many similar homes were demolished to make way for the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. The Dickey House is also one of the few homes from the Federal era to survive intact south of Chambers Street, the oldest section of the city.


The Commission does not comment on cases before public hearings.


From 1823 to 1919, the Schermerhorn family, including Peter Schermerhorn, the director of the Bank of New York and vestryman of Grace Church, owned the home, renting it to a number of socially prominent New Yorkers. It was later thought to have become a boardinghouse, and in 1872, well-known architect Detlef Lienau renovated the home, adding a fourth story and installing a molded metal cornice on the front and a neo-Grecian hood over the entrance. In 1922, a one-story storefront extension was built facing Trinity Place, and at a later, unknown date, the building was carved into apartments.


The home’s current owner is Martha Schessel, who inherited the property after her parents died in 1999. She is not in favor of the landmark designation.


“The upper floors have been unoccupied for 18 years because of electrical, mechanical, and structural problems, and it just isn’t economical to fix it up enough to make it sound,” Ms. Schessel’s lawyer, Jay Segal, said. The ground floor has three units, one of which is occupied by a restaurant. The remaining two are vacant. “If she had her way, they would take it down and a better building would be built in its stead,” Mr. Segal said.


The building, which is at the intersection of Rector Street, is one of 13 Federal-style town homes that landmark groups have been trying to designate for two years. This is the fifth building on which the Landmarks Commission has held a hearing, and it has so far designated three on MacDougal Street. It is voting on a fourth property at today’s meeting. Officials familiar with the process are confident it will vote in favor of designating the property a landmark.


“Landmarks doesn’t bring something to a vote unless they have enough support for it,” said the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman.


“In addition to its architecture, this home is significant because it is the first land marking in the financial district since September 11,” Mr. Berman said. “Since the attacks, redevelopment has been all about building new, and here we have the ability to preserve something old, something so fragile but such a survivor.”


The New York Sun

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