Contemplating the future of East Midtown, I see that the Landmarks Preservation Commission is not spending a lot of time protecting the few remaining testaments to this neighborhood’s long-ago status as a precindt of beautiful private homes. Among the most spectacular and significant survivors are the adjoining Dickerson houses on East 34th Street, just west of Park.
The houses were designed in the late 1870s by Mead, McKim and Bigelow, soon to become Mead, McKim and White. Kind of major, right? And these are considered their earliest surviving NYC commission.
Kind of major, too, that, as Tom Miller notes on his Daytoninan in Manhattan blog, they represent one of the very first introductions of the Queen Anne style to NYC.
The upper floors of the façade are intact, and in fact, now look better than they have in years. The lower levels were long ago altered to make way for stores. Inside the upper stories, which are now apartments, are an extraordinary suite of period interiors
In 1991, The New York Times’ Christopher Gray visited when a doctor owned them. Gray described the interiors as “museum quality.”
Recently the buildings were sold, the prospectus touting the site as perfect for a new tower.
However, for now the new owner has restored the upper surviving portions of the original facades.
Miller notes that Landmarks is reluctant to designate altered structures. But obviously these buildings deserve landmark status, however, and LPC should not fall pray to a blinkered, prissy purism.
Combating the eradication of history resulting from the city’s over-development requires a less blinkered, more holistic approach. Especially in a city like New York, it is unrealistic to use alteration as an exclusionary criterion.
