Over owner’s protests, city landmarks Strand bookstore

It’s official: The home of the Strand bookstore is now a historical site, and the owners are not happy.

The city on Tuesday landmarked 828 Broadway, where the famous bookstore is located, the New York Post reported.

The decision from the Landmark Preservation Committee came even as the store’s owners opposed the move.

In a tweet, the 92-year-old bookstore said the designation was not what it had hoped for.

“This was unfair from the start. We are fighting this at the grassroots level. We need your support,” the store’s owner, Nancy Bass Wyden, added in a tweet.

Bass Wyden previously told the commission that landmarking the building would make it harder for the store to operate.

“We’re operating on very thin margins here, and this would just cost us a lot more, with this landmarking, and be a lot more hassle,” Bass Wyden told the New York Times in December.

The Strand’s home at 828 Broadway, south of Union Square between East 12th and East 14th Streets, is a Renaissance Revival-style and loft building that stands 11 stories tall. William H. Birkmire designed the structure, which at one point was occupied by various businesses in the garment industry, in 1902. The Strand moved to the building in 1956, where it has been ever since.

The Commission also granted landmarked status to six other properties in the area on Tuesday: 817 Broadway, 830 Broadway, 832-834 Broadway, 836 Broadway, 840 Broadway and 841 Broadway.

The seven buildings were constructed between 1876 and 1902, at a time when the neighborhood was undergoing rapid commercial development.

The properties “represent an important era in Broadway’s history and recognize the significant contributions that these late-19th century commercial structures made to the area’s architectural and historic character,” the Commission said in a press release. [NYP] — Mary Diduch