Shipwreck!

In working on a townhouse, I was making drawings I had never made before like street tree applications, builder’s pavement plans, etc… Usually these types of drawings are relegated to lowly consultant engineers… but since I’m helping out a sole practitioner with limited resources, I was tasked with gaining regulatory approval for the project.

Meeting street tree, zoning, and pavement regulations is rather mundane and straightforward.  Say there’s a law saying you need a street tree for every 25 feet of sidewalk. You prepare a set of drawings and pictures showing your sidewalk is less than 25’ wide littered with obstructing utility poles, show drawings how to protect existing trees, and cut a check for a tree fund to plant a tree on another site. Some full-time tree reviewer in the city parks department grants approval to your street tree application. Say there’s a law saying you can’t build more than 60% of the land on your site, so you make sure you don’t build over your whole backyard. Some department of buildings plan examiner confirms your building is not in violation of zoning. Say there’s stipulations that every renovation exceeding a certain value triggers repaving the road in front of the house. You make drawings showing street paving details including curbs and slopes.  Some roadway engineer checks that your drawings are in compliance with the latest asphalt road details. 

After deftly shepherding the townhouse design through a multitude of building department objections, we only had one formal hurdle to cross before proceeding with construction - Landmarks Preservation Commission approval.

I had never gone through this process before so I didn’t know what to expect. In hindsight, there was nothing that we could’ve done to prepare for this process… as it is entirely subjective and arcane.

The LPC was created in the aftermath of the McKim Mead and White’s old Penn Station’s demolition to make room for the modern Penn Station in 1965. To prevent future blunders like that, every month, 11 landmarks commissioners gather 3 times for public hearings. Overseeing 37,000 properties spanning 149 historic districts, these 11 commissioners appointed by the mayor decide whether designs within historic neighborhoods can be built or not. Architects pitch their visions and commissioners decide whether they can build them in historic neighborhoods.

According to their website, the LPC “stabilizes and improves property values, fosters civic pride, protects and enhance the City's attractions to tourists, strengthens the economy of the City, promotes the use of historic districts, landmarks, interior landmarks, and scenic landmarks for the education, pleasure and welfare of the people of the City.” Their officious meetings are streamed and archived on youtube for posterity.

Having gone through a hearing and presenting our townhouse renovation for landmarks approval, I can summarize the LPC and their process in a more direct and coherent manner. They are a loose confederacy of douchebags who prefer not to see any changes to historical neighborhoods whatsoever. Their primary function is to arbitrarily tell prospective renovators they shall not construct anything that is visible. They hold epic 9 hour meetings, and ramble in circuitous tangents leaving you thinking what the fuck are they talking about and why am I on this earth?

Case in point. Before our presentation for our dinky townhouse, there was a huge SOM presentation about a South Street Seaport project-- a rather large invasive development along the water by the Brooklyn Bridge. For that project, a commissioner, Mr C opined about a seaport project in the following fashion. “I would like to have your permission to indulge a couple minutes to talk about context and background before I get to the specifics of the latest proposal. To let you get into the nooks and crannies of my mind. The so called view from 70,000 miles up looking down. "

"For those of you who don’t know, my father was a seaman. A merchant marine ship captain who went down with his ship. He was the last person to jump over the propeller according to the few survivors recounts that saw him fulfill his duty in the biggest typhoon. A storm much larger than Hurricane Sandy. He perished at sea half a century ago when I was a little kid. It is with profound sadness that in sitting through 9 hours of testimony I feel as though I’m sitting on the captain’s walk. The widow’s walk. The balcony view looking back at the ship that never arrived with a crew that never came back. And the sacrifices the sailors went through as they sailed around the cape horn. Tierra del fuego. South America. Site of thousands of shipwrecks. The sailors were out at sea, not able to see their families for months. Some sailors  never made it home. "

"And so to me I love the city. There are 2 things I love – its unique rich history and the fact that it is the source and origin of the Nile and the seaport. Because my office is a half mile north. I walk down by the seaport a lot. Clearly this is a fifty year experiment that failed. I was googling last night. Looking up the 10 greatest harbors in the world. Randomly, anecdotally Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Vancouver came up. No one listed nyc. And so yet, I know how much so many people want to preserve the Seaport. This is the profound tragedy. This nation and country owe so much to the Giovanni Verrazano, Henry Hudson, Dewitt clinton who created additional seaways. 70% of world is covered by water. And it is due to water that gave rise to this nation and every civilization is near water."

" So…. That’s why I look at this way. This is a baby that everyone wants to preserve and treasure and we left it as an orphan. 50 years of an experimenting gone wrong. You let the seaport unsupported. A non-sustaining model where they fended for themselves to raise the funds. They’ve cycled through different owners like the ross corporation, howard hughes, and now this developer presenting today…. so this is my fundamental learning as I was involved for 50 years as a community board landmark chair in Queens. Somebody has to care of the baby. Pay for the baby. And we all have a role. The city has a role. The private sector, and citizens and we’re expecting a miracle."

"The water is coming in. I want to take more holistic look. Now we have evacuation routes inland. We have to elevate the ground floor of buildings to avoid flood. This is the worst time, the government is clearly out of money. So now. I wished king Solomon sitting next to me. Placed a quandary in our lap. Split the baby in two? Do you want to do that? We looked at this thing. We look at this thing we loved and enjoyed for half a century. It’s seen turmoil and chaos. We used have the world trade center. Manufacturing came and went. Fish came and gone. 1 Chase Plaza got built and shifted. And I think. How would my father judge this case? My biggest fear is would this developer turn around and say it’s not worth it to build here. As commissioner we know the air right policies didn’t sustain seaport or the museum. The question is now what. What is real? We can fool ourselves there will be another savior. Those are my thoughts. I can go into the specifics. I thank you for this indulgence.”

So this commissioner, Mr. C,  who wanted to invoke the guiding spirit of his father, the ghost of the captain who drowned valiantly from a shipwreck off tierra del fuego was politely thanked by the lead commissioner for providing his local color on the project. I was confused by Mr. C’s indulgence. Did he want the developers to take care of the baby and revitalize the seaport? Did he think it was a good idea to rebuild within a floodzone or not? Between King Solomon, a failed experimental urban planning baby, a drowned father and fishes that have come and gone, i had no idea what C was trying to convey.  I found his performance humorous. it reminded me of Richard Pryor's Bicentennial prayer.  Bicentennial Prayer (Remastered Version) - YouTube

Following the Seaport presentation we made our case for adding another floor to a townhouse and extending the rear façade 12 feet into the backyard. 

After a week of preparation and rehearsals, S. made her case, trying to weave in the stories of the people involved with the project. “Honorable commissioner, we’re here today to propose a rear yard addition and roof top addition. Before getting into specifics, let me give a brief background. The clients have lived and worked in the neighborhood since 2004. They love the neighborhood and want to renovate their house to make space for their children. This house rests in a residential architectural neighborhood of historically working class families that sprouted in 1870. We want to continue to make boerum hill a place for growing families and working people of nyc. 1870. In 2012 the client’s neighbor built an addition to their house. Our site has an existing footprint of 16’-8” by 36 feet long. With only 1800 sf floor area our challenge was to find the space for the family harmonious with the rowhouses that surround it. We will replace and restore all the historic windows and doors on the street façade. Given the fact that our block is comprised of  buildings of various heights, we propose to add a roof top addition and rear extension. We would set back our addition from the street and use brick to relate to the existing context. The existing cornice would remain and be legible from the street.”

Following S.’s presentation, the hearing was opened to comments by the public.

Neighbors chimed in during the hearing to voice their support. “We live on an eclectic block. We feel the design is tastefully done. Community growth needs space. Things are kind of crazy with covid. Everyone is working from home. We feel this proposal fits boerum. We love the  use of brick material.”

Two historical Victorian society representative with nothing better to do in their life voiced their concern, “the rooftop addition is way to large. We want to minimize the visibility of the massing. The additional mass looks like it is clunkily looming. And the rear façade has no historical tie. It’s inappropriate. We request the top windows of the existing building remain intact and visible from the rear yard.

At this point the clients entered the hearing. “We love the neighborhood. When this district was going to be landmarked in 2018, we were told these sorts of developments that we had in mind were ok. We were told it would be a seamless process to renovate our house. We would like to express our desires to live in the neighborhood.”

After the public voiced their views, the lead commissioner called for the hearings to be closed to the public to start their discussion. The first commissioner, G. thanked us for our presentation and appreciated the owner’s involvement in the landmark process for the neighborhood. After these obligatory niceties, he thus began to plunge his dagger into the project and repeatedly stabbed the psyche of our clients with a host of arbitrary restrictions. “I’d like to point out some things. In our typical experience, any addition to brownstone we focus on visibility issues and  the purview from street. Part of it is about considering integrity of structure that is protected and the landmark designation translates into in most cases a desire to preserve the volume of the historic old structure. You can’t just add a new façade on an old structure. Almost always we request the top floor of the rear wall be retained so the volume of the building can be read through the new additions. With these stipulations, the additions to the roof and at the rear will get affected in these ways. The top floor must come down 2 floors in the rear. You are allowed 2 story addition in the rear yard, but you must leave the existing top 3rd floor the in its historic. Any roof top addition must be setback from back wall 3 to five feet. Unfortunately your neighbor’s renovation preceded landmark status for the block. If it were proposed today, it would never have been approved. As a committee, we would permit 2 story addition. You can align your rear addition to the neighbors. Any roof top addition must be set back from the street, lowered, and made less visible. All of these modifications made in combination could result in approval.

After G’s judgment the rest of the commissioners voiced their support of G’s analysis like lemmings jumping the cliff. One commissioner A. admitted “It’s my judgment this site can’t work for this family. Your testimony was persuasive, but one’s desires and love of their neighborhood is not enough. Your renovation proposal overwhelms the neighborhood. Even your choice of materials is misguided. It should be metal instead of brick so it doesn’t call much attention to itself. This project requires significant rework.”

Commissioner C, who previously indulged us with his meandering story of his father and deep experiences and human connections to historical seafaring explorers and biblical figures now only mustered “I agree with G” in his comments.

In the aftermath of the hearing, the owners wanted to cut their losses and stop the project. They had already paid out tens of thousands of dollars in engineering and consultant fees. They were not going to get the house they imagined and had been dreaming about for 2 years. they were completely disillusioned and crestfallen by the regulatory process.

For the past 2 years, I’ve seen housing complex project die in bureaucratic swamps, a new school construction denied because a community wanted a supermarket in their housing complex ground floor instead of a school, a music school not able to secure funding for its endeavors, a poet’s café and library lose funding to covid. I was not about to go down my ship without a fight! 

That night, I furiously drafted a new set of plans and sections for the house and told S. there was actually potential to make an even better house than we had proposed. She was pessimistic. But I showed her options. Options that brought light and air down a skinny long townhouse… options in which the stairs could wind its way through the house like a helix tying the garden to a penthouse, I then spent 40 hours over the span of 3 days devising 4 options to ride the largest typhoon of zoning, code, client's needs, and LPC’s parameters. 

Into the storm and strong waves, i held the steering wheel firm with belief if you’re a good architect you can make something good out of the bleakest and most extenuating circumstances.,,, or maybe it's my personality to battle on the ship to the last moment and be the last one to jump over the propeller only after all options are exhausted. whatever it is that makes me behave the way i do, we presented the schemes to the client the following week. They were positive-- or rather didn’t outright tell us to cease and desist. We then submitted our plans to the LPC the week after. We have another hearing to re-present the project. At that point, hopefully upon LPC approval, the client will decide to continue with the project.