The Landmarks Commission meeting is scheduled for tomorrow, July 13, at 2:00 p.m. It will be held at 904 Lexington Avenue (at the corner of East 68th Street), in Lecture Hall 714 of Hunter College on the 7th floor. Anyone who wants to speak gets two minutes — sign up in advance in the lobby of the auditorium.
If you plan to speak, be courteous and come prepared. Pamela Geller has important background on the landmark status of the building here.
“D-Day for mosque,” by Tom Topousis in the New York Post, July 12:
A proposed Ground Zero mosque will hit its first — and likely only — city hurdle tomorrow when the Landmarks Preservation Commission holds a hearing to determine whether a historic building now at the site should be protected from demolition.
But the battle will draw few if any of the city’s preservation groups, which for now appear ready to sit on the sidelines rather than weigh in on the fate of the 152-year-old building at 45-47 Park Place, which would be demolished to build the mosque.
Yet a similar building was granted landmark status as being “one of the few remaining palazzo-style buildings on Broadway in Lower Manhattan.” But this one is fine to be demolished — because a mosque will go up in its place, and to oppose that, even though it will be run by pro-Sharia Islamic supremacists, would be “Islamophobic.”
“The debate isn’t about the architecture of the building, it’s about the use,” said Peg Breen of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, one of several city groups that have championed the preservation of historic buildings.
The commission will be holding a hearing tomorrow on a proposal to designate as a landmark the five-story building, which features cast iron and a stone facade. The former shipping warehouse and showroom has been under consideration since 1989.
21 years. So why the mad rush to settle the case now?