History
The Landmarks Preservation Commission's first hearing occurred in September, 1965 over the future of the Astor Library on Lafayette Street and the building was given a new use and preserved as The Public Theater. 25 years later, the Commission was cited by David Dinkins as having preserved New York City's municipal identity and enhanced the market perception of a number of neighborhoods. This success is believed to be due, in part, to the general acceptance of the commission by the city's developers.
The Commission was headquartered in the Old New York Evening Post Building from 1980 to 1987.
In 1989, when the Commission and its process was under review following a panel created by Mayor Koch in 1985, a decision was made to change the process by which buildings are declared to be landmarks due to some perceived issues with the manner by which the Commission operates as well as the realization that the destruction feared when the Commission was formed was no longer imminent.
In its first 25 years of existence, the Commission designated 856 buildings, 79 interiors and 9 parks or other outdoor places as landmarks, while declaring 52 neighborhoods with more than 15,000 buildings as historic districts.
As of March 27, 2012 the LPC has granted landmark status to over 27,000 buildings including 107 historic districts, 1,304 individual landmarks, 114 interior landmarks, and 10 scenic landmarks in all five boroughs. Some of these are also National Historic Landmarks (NHL) sites, and many are National Registered Historic Places (NRHP).
Read more about this topic: New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)