In 1988-89 I was working with Betsey Johnson on a book, Diary of Betsey Johnson, that Doubleday was going to publish but didn’t, for moronic reasons which I’ll talk about later.
Frequently Betsey took me to dinner at the Canal Bar on Greenwich Street, and frequently I’d walk her back to her apartment south of Canal Street. I remember one night I toured her to Renwick Street around the corner from the Canal to show her a row of several early-nineteenth century homes that had been remodeled into a garage. However, their original roof lines and the distinct configuration of the houses was intact. Betsey and I remarked on the different layers of historic strata visible on the streets of New York City.
Several years ago, I went to see if they ere still there, and they were not, replaced by a condo. To me this underscored one of the central weaknesses in landmark designation in NYC: if a building has been partially remodeled or renovated it is no longer considered eligible for designation. But to limit the purview and criteria to only the most pristine examples of intact original shape and detail is to ignore the ongoing evolution of the city and the way that structures may serve to eloquently and significantly document that.
Another central weakness is the Landmark Commission’s seeming indifference toward individual or groups of buildings importance in maintaining diversity of scale–regardless of whether or not the individual buildings are considered architecturally or historically exceptional.
In other words, these ancient buildings on Renwick Street preserved an important connection to the past, preserved a low-rise quotient to the scale of the surrounding blocks. They should not have been torn down to make way for another banal, elitist condo.