Now The Observer Responds

Author Tom Wolfe continues to stir New York's preservation community and the press that covers it, weeks after his Op-Ed was published in the New York Times . This time his piece served as the inspiration for an article by Tom Acitelli in the New York Observer . The article Preservationists Cry Wolfe; We’ve Got Their Numbers tries to debunk Wolfe's claims that "the Landmarks Preservation Commission has been de facto defunct for going on 20 years" through statistical analysis. How? Essentially he showed that the Commission has been steadily designating landmarks and landmark districts at the same level since 1994 and that the outer boroughs have been equally treated by LPC over the same time period; a direct answer to a couple of Wolfe's criticisms.

Of course, the problem with these statistics is that they only go back to 1994, which was at the beginning of the Giuliani/Raab era (long considered a dark period for historic preservation). In fact, when you look back through the commission's whole history, you find a completely different story. As we recently pointed out in our response to Chairman Tierney's own response to Wolfe , the past 20 years have seen 7,000 landmarks dedicated by the commission (350 per year). The previous 22 years saw 16,000 designations (727 per year). In essence, the commission is 52% less effective than it used to be! Sounds like Wolfe has some statistics on his side.

In addition, let's not forget the problems which can't be easily shown through numbers, such as the commission's Lack of Fairness , and its Lack of Independence . Of course, you can always analyze the numbers associated with the Commission's Lack of Resources, but those numbers don't paint a pretty picture.