Landmarks Commission approves Brooklyn Historic District

From left: Brooklyn Historic District and Manhattan properties Hardenbrook-Somarindyck House, Fish Harkness House and 154 West 14th Street

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has unanimously approved the designations of a 600-building Crown Heights North II Historic District in Brooklyn and three individual Manhattan buildings, the commission announced this afternoon. These decisions will indirectly affect around 1,781 city buildings.

“Today LPC not only took steps to protect more of the city’s history, it made history,” said Commission Chairman Robert Tierney. “It designated, calendared or held public hearings on more buildings in a single day for the first time since the 2,020-building Upper West Side Historic District was approved in 1990.”

The 600-building historic area is bound by Bergen Street and Eastern Parkway to the north and south, and Nostrand and Brooklyn avenues to the west and east. It joins up with the existing 472-building Crown Heights North Historic District, designated in 2007.

The area is made up of rowhouses, freestanding residences and apartment houses constructed between the 1870s and 1920s. It features the work of prominent neo-Grec, Queen Anne, Art Deco and Art Modern architects. Its earliest buildings, by architect E.B. Stringer, date back to 1876.

“The neighborhood is an exquisite mosaic of remarkably well-preserved examples of architectural styles and building types,” Tierney said.

As for Manhattan, the commission approved the designation of 154 West 14th Street, a terra cott-clad loft at Seventh Avenue built in 1913, the neo-Tudor Gothic Fish Harkness House at 12 East 53rd Street and the Federal Style Hardenbrook-Somarindyck House at 135 Bowery completed in 1817. — Katherine Clarke