New York City has stopped awarding historic landmark designations, leaving some of the city’s most notable old buildings at risk of being razed.
According to city records, no buildings are currently even under consideration by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), the department charged with protecting sites of beauty and significance from bulldozers.
That puts this year on track to be the worst ever for preservation since the department began in 1965.
“Without landmark protection, it’s very likely that eventually all of the historic buildings, the tenements, the old synagogues and churches, the institutional buildings will be demolished and turned into luxury housing and expensive hotels, the way things are going,” Richard Moses, president of the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, told The Post of the current climate.
The socialists who have taken over have a dim view of preserving old buildings, particularly houses of worship, because they’d rather see more affordable apartments. They claim keeping churches from being torn down isn’t “equitable.”
Preservationists are particularly alarmed over the fate of Most Holy Redeemer church on East 3rd Street in Manhattan’s East Village — a granite and limestone cathedral built in 1851 by German missionaries.
The building, owned by the Catholic diocese, has been closed to regular service in recent years, only occasionally hosting events, said Moses.
“I would call it the most important landmarking situation in the East Village. It’s really a beautiful church and the interior is really magnificent,” said Moses, adding that designation doesn’t usually protect the inside of buildings.
“The Lower East Side really is one of the most important historic areas in the country in our view. At one point, about a third of Americans could trace their routes through the Lower East Side,” he added.
If the church were given a preservation order, then even if sold its façade would be required to remain as it is. East Village Catholic, the diocese that operates Most Holy Redeemer, did not respond to requests for comment.
However, it may not meet requirements. Citing “the killing of George Floyd” and “attacks on democracy” LPC announced an “equity framework” in 2021 to “ensure diversity and inclusion in designations” and focus on “prioritizing designations that represent New York City’s diversity.”
Shortages in housing across New York City have pushed rents to record highs, with median monthly rent in Manhattan reaching $5,300 in June, up 8% from a year earlier, according to Corcoran real estate.
Developers and city planners alike are looking for any places they can to build and help ease the crisis. “NYC’s housing affordability crisis is at DEFCON 1,” City Comptroller Mark Levine said over the summer, adding: “We need to push harder on every front to address our housing shortage.”
Preservationists are particularly worried about buildings being demolished to make way for affordable housing, after a bill called the “Faith Based Affordable Housing Act” was introduced by Brooklyn Democrats Andrew Gounardes and Brian Cunningham.
It targeted houses of worship to have their landmark protections amended to allow developers to add-on or completely demolish sites of historic religious significance as long as they offered a fraction of the units they build at below market rates.
“There’s a certain feeling that landmarking is detrimental to affordable housing,”Richard Moses, president of the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, told The Post said of the current climate.
The “Faith Based Affordable Housing Act” worked its way around Albany for two years, but died in the last legislative session. However, New York’s Democratic Socialist mayor Mamdani — who frames housing as a guaranteed public good rather than a speculative commodity — recently targeted 12 neighborhoods with the “lowest rate of affordable housing production,” including the Upper West Side and Bay Ridge in Brooklyn for fast-track development.
“The housing crisis is a symptom of the affordability crisis, and to solve it… all corners of the city need to step up,” Hizzonor warned at an Oct. 1 press conference.
“Culture is low on the totem pole. If the mayor really wants an affordable housing complex to go on a historic site, it’ll probably happen,” Michele Bogart, former vice president of the New York City Art Commission under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, told The Post.
The city currently boasts over 38,000 landmarked properties. The vast majority of those are contained within 159 landmarked districts — entire blocks or neighborhoods that have been preserved through the decades after tedious review.
Three buildings were officially landmarked this year — West 30th Street’s Lithuanian Alliance Building; Grand Street’s Church of Saint Mary, both in Manhattan, and Brooklyn’s Public School 15 Annex — but those had been put on the schedule under former Mayor Eric Adams’s administration.
Other sites preservationists are angling to get protected include Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church on West 14th Street. Founded in 1902 it was the city’s first Spanish-speaking congregation, where radical activist Dorothy Day and 1950s beatniks like Jack Kerouac attended worship. It has been de-commissioned by the diocese, putting it at risk.
Various preservation groups are also lobbying for landmark recognition of 2nd Avenue’s New York Ear and Eye Infirmary, an 1856 Italianate brownstone; Church of the Transfiguration in Maspeth, Queens, built in 1962 which blends mid-century modern design with traditional Lithuanian folk architectural; and the 1857 Church of St. Michael in Chelsea.
New York City’s LPC was established in response to the 1963 demolition of the original Penn Station to make way for Madison Square Garden, an architectural loss that still outrages many New Yorkers today. But after decades of robust preservation, which has included famed sites like the Plaza Hotel and Grand Central Terminal, efforts have slowed to a trickle in recent years, with just 11 designations in 2024 and only four last year. The LPC did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
“It’s a nightmare what’s happening with the churches,” Bogart, author of “The Politics of Urban Beauty,” said.
“I don’t see the merit of tearing down a church in favor of putting up some anodyne glass building.
“You lose something significant in that. But the city will gain more for its coffers, presumably, in tax money.”