Design 2147 CEO Sisto Martello recently spoke with Anne Holford-Smith, FAIA, LEED AP, Partner at PBDW Architects, about landmark preservation in New York City. Here are some of the important takeaways from the conversation.
Q: Tell us a little bit about the role that you had for the last five years with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.
A: I had the great privilege of being selected to serve on the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. There are 11 commissioners; the chair is a paid position and there are 10 volunteers. There is one Commissioner who represents each of the five boroughs, at least one architect and one person in real estate. Whenever a project goes to a public hearing, that’s when the commissioners view the materials and make decisions on whether it’s appropriate or not.
Q: You must see some pretty interesting things, because more and more districts here in New York City seem to be starting to get added as potential landmarks. Tell us a little bit about that process. How does a building become landmarked?
A: You can petition the Commission to have your property or neighborhood designated. You submit an application for evaluation, and then the amazing staff at Landmarks reviews it, they go visit the sites, they must go through historical records. They want to see how close it is to the original condition, how intact it is, whether it’s a house or a building. And the same thing applies to a neighborhood that is being proposed as an historic district; is it in that state of its true history?
Q: Once they make a determination, does it go back to a community board? How do they then decide how to move it forward?
A: You definitely want to get buy in from the owner or the community because otherwise it’s just an uphill battle. There’s a lot of discussions at community meetings, with neighbors, a lot of neighborhood associations. And sometimes the neighborhood association is the one who is actually petitioning for it. There’s a lot of community input, and then when the evaluation is made at the staff level that the application is worthy, then the property or the district comes to the Commission to be calendared.
Q: Once it’s calendared, then you’re stuck in that limbo with the Department of Buildings. What does DOB do at that point? Can they act on it without getting a landmark approval?
A: Everything has to go through public review, so you have to give notice. You can’t just all of a sudden say, this is a landmark. So that’s the process. Landmarks does understand that there is sort of a limbo when a property is calendared, between that and making an actual designation. They try to expedite the process.
Q: We started a job the other day on a beautiful landmarked building, and we’re going through the historical records. It’s amazing how some records in this city are so beautiful: how it’s organized, the I-cards, the landmark side of it. And then you may go to the Department of Buildings and not find anything. If you really are a good detective, you could find a lot about a lot of buildings without even going to the DOB, which to me is amazing.
A: I think you find more information from other sources than at the Building Department. The municipal archives, libraries, tax photos, there are lots of resources. You have to do your own research.
Q: Back in the day, it was like, okay, I’m going to Manhattan, I’ve got to go to Archives, I’ve got to go to the DOB, I’ve got to go to Landmarks. And you went to six or seven different places until you found that one little piece that you needed that was the difference between getting your job approved sometimes and not getting it approved – or getting through landmarks.
A: We have an example of that on a project that we recently completed; the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where we designed a tower. It’s a late McKim, Mead and White bank building with a one-story building annex next to it. We proposed a tower because you’re allowed by zoning to build that. But landmarks pushed back because it’s a fairly tall building next to the bank. We did research and we found an article published that showed that McKim, Mead and White had designed a tower for that location that was never built. We got it approved. So you have to do research.
Q: Are landmarked buildings expected to comply with Local Law 97?
A: I don’t know that it was considered, the impact of Local Law 97 on landmarks. I think one thing that’s really tricky with a historic building project, you might be doing an exterior restoration, but you’re not touching the inside. If it’s a masonry building, how do you make it comply without taking the plaster off the inside and insulating, which is a whole different scope that the owner wasn’t planning on doing. There are exceptions to the Law, and I think that those exceptions are for reasons like that.
Q: Tell us a little bit about the vision of the Landmarks Commission.
A: While I was there [2018-2024], the Commission was looking to expand the number of landmarks outside Manhattan, which has a high concentration of landmarks and historic districts. They were looking at neighborhoods that maybe had been overlooked before. It’s a lot of legwork for the staff to go out to visit sites and make recommendations.
Q: How did you decide you wanted to pursue a career in landmark architecture?
A: I think a lot of it had to do with my parents. We used to go on family trips, and they were always to historic places. I think that just instilled in me a love of history and these old buildings – and I always liked to draw. I had an uncle who was in the interior design business, and he had gone to Pratt. I did two years in interior design at FIT and then I went to Pratt for architecture. It was in the 80s, and it was kind of a rough time in Bed-Stuy. There were a lot of boarded-up buildings. Now it’s a beautiful neighborhood.
Q: How did you transition from a recent graduate to working in the landmark preservation world? Did you have a mentor?
A: I was really fortunate to have both Paul Byard and Charles Platt, co-founders of PBDW Architects, as my mentors. I started out working on new construction at the firm, but there were a lot of preservation projects in the office, a lot of landmarks projects, and I said, “I’d like to do that. Can I work on one of those?” Eventually, as I worked my way up, I started working on preservation projects. I’ve been at PBDW 32 years now – most of my career. When you find a good thing, you stick with it.
Q: Private schools tend to have a lot of landmarks. They need space, but there’s community opposition. The design of schools today is changing from what it used to be. Tell me a little bit about how your firm is adjusting to that.
A: It’s very different. We’re working right now for Regis High School. It’s a historic landmark building. It’s an interesting donut-shaped building with an inner courtyard, which is very precious to them, but also constrains what they can do. It’s a bit like a chess game, moving and reprogramming spaces to fit the existing building. It’s important to maintain the legacy and history of a great old institution, but you need to have modern technology.
We did a master plan for the school. And, as typical of schools, they try to bite off small projects that they can do over the summer. We often have these bite-sized projects that we do in the summer, but we’re looking to do a larger project with this renovation with new STEM classrooms. I think they are planning to add half a dozen classrooms, and reconfiguration of offices and breakout spaces, and to create spaces that offer collaboration. These flexible spaces can mean that everything now is a room.
Q: It seems like the mechanical part of the STEM classrooms would be the toughest part.
A: Yes. You have to deal with the existing building structure. You might want a much taller ceiling for a lab than is possible. You have to work around that, identifying spaces that have the most flexibility to accommodate things like hoods.
Q: If you were to set a goal for the Landmarks Commission, what do you think they should do?
A: I think that the future is in the outer boroughs and looking at neighborhoods that may have been overlooked in the past. The Commission is really making an effort to look at the diverse experiences of the people who lived in New York City. Sometimes there isn’t much architectural significance, but a property has cultural significance. There are amazing neighborhoods in every borough. When I was on the Commission, we designated the very southern tip of Staten Island. It was a very important Native American site on the water where they lived and fished. And we designated it as an archaeological site so it’s protected.
There’s only so much that the commission can do with their staff, and they try to do as much as they can. But if people in those neighborhoods see that something is perhaps at risk for development and they want to protect that neighborhood, then they should contact the commission.
Q: How much does the City of Yes program help preserve these buildings?
A: I’m not sure I know the answer yet, because City of Yes is so new. I think trying to keep neighborhoods dense and not sprawling is very important. And the reuse of buildings rather than tearing them down: adaptive reuse of office to residential, allowing residential in former manufacturing zones like the garment district. We also need to protect manufacturing by finding other locations for it in the city.
