Letter from Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation

We received this letter from Andrew Berman, Executive Director of GVSHP. We thought you might be interested in it:

Dear fellow preservationist,

As you may have heard, after finding sporadic cases over the years of landmarked buildings in our neighborhood not being marked as such in Department of Buildings (DOB) records, GVSHP recently conducted a survey of all buildings in the Greenwich Village Historic District. At over 2,200 buildings the Greenwich Village Historic District is one of the city’s largest historic districts, and one of the oldest, having been designated in 1969. We were shocked to discover that about 17% of the buildings in that district were NOT marked as landmarks in DOB records (see www.gvshp.org/landmarkrecords.htm ). This is particularly distressing because without DOB records showing a building as a landmark, it is possible for an owner to get permits from DOB that the LPC would never allow, including demolition and alteration permits, as we have seen happen in our neighborhood.

The response we have gotten to word of this has been tremendous, with many preservationists from across the City sharing similar stories with us about landmarked buildings in their neighborhoods not marked as such in DOB records, and the negative consequences. We have spoken to the LPC at length about this, and they have assured us that the problem has been corrected. However, I know from experience that there are ongoing problems with DOB records not listing a whole range of protected categories that they are supposed to, so I am skeptical that the problem has been permanently fixed and will stay fixed. Additionally, while the DOB records for the Village were being “corrected,” we found that several buildings that were supposedly fixed were not fixed, and several buildings that had been correctly listed as landmarks were “unmarked” as part of this “correction” process. We have asked the City Council to look into this problem, to help ensure that it is in fact permanently corrected Click here for letter .

However, in the meantime, many preservationists and organizations have asked us how we conducted our survey and how they might do the same, to help ensure that their buildings are all correctly marked and protected. I am therefore including below directions from Melissa Baldock, our Director of Preservation and Research who conducted our survey, on how you can survey your own landmarked buildings to see if they are correctly marked as such in DOB records. Please let me know what the results are of what you find, good or bad. If you have questions about how to conduct a survey or check for appropriate listing of your landmarked buildings, please don’t hesitate to contact Melissa at mbaldock@gvshp.org .

Best,
Andrew Berman, Executive Director
Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
212/475-9585 x38
232 East 11th Street
New York , NY 10003

1. You'll need a good map showing the Block and Lot numbers of the buildings within the historic district. The Sanborn maps are probably the easiest, but if you don't have those, you could always pull the maps from www.oasisnyc.net . You have to zoom into the scale of about .35 miles in order to get the block and lot lines to appear, and then be sure to click on the box on the side so that the labels for the block and lot appear on the map.

2. Go to DOB's BIS system online: http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/bispi00.jsp . At the menu page for the Building Information Search, under #4, select the appropriate borough and put in a Block number for a block that is within your historic district, but leave the Lot number section blank. This will bring you a list of every single structure within the block, including backhouses and other accessory builidngs. The list includes whether or not the buildings are marked with an "L."

3. For those blocks which are all entirely within the historic district, every single building should be marked with an "L" but you may find buildings which aren't correctly marked. I found with the Village, that most of the time the unmarked buildings were on lots on which there were multiple buildings.

4. Repeat this process for each of the blocks in the historic district. It does become somewhat tricky when you are dealing with blocks that are partially in and partially out of the historic district. In those cases, you'll just have to be careful to determine which buildings/lots are inside and which are outside of the historic district.

5. If you are testing individual buildings rather than entire blocks, be sure to check the number of buildings on the lot. Once you're at the main information page for a building/lot, on the top middle is a category "Buildings on Lot ." If there is more than one building, you can click on the numeral and it will bring you to a list of buildings on the lot. BIS gives each separate structure its own Building Identification Number (or BIN) and each BIN within a landmarked lot should have an "L."

6. A list of any incorrectly “unmarked” buildings should be sent to Diane Jackier at the Landmarks Preservation Commission at DJackier@lpc.nyc.gov. We have found that LPC will generally respond to these lists very quickly and let you know when the corrections have been made, though you may want to then check yourself to see if they have all in fact been done correctly.