Op-Ed by Sandy Reiburn (longtime Fort Greene Resident and a member of Friends of Fort Greene Park)
The De-Greening Of Fort Greene Park Leaves Its Friends Feeling Blue
“With its decision last week (11/21) to let the city’s Parks Department make major renovations to historic Fort Greene Park, the Landmarks Preservation Commission has apparently added yet another New York City icon to the vanishing city list.
…. the park will still be there, but it won’t be as leafy and green. It will be missing more than four dozen trees, lose the beloved grassy mounds created by landscape architect A. E. Bye, be robbed of swaths of grass which will be replaced by more concrete pavement – and denied some historical features that provide the essential character of this park. ..”
And From The Bowery Alliance of Neighbors:
“On the Lower East Side there are two almost 200-year-old Federal-style houses that need your help now.
206 Bowery and 22 East Broadway had been deemed by the Landmarks Preservation Commission as significant enough to be classified as “calendared”, which means placed in a protected category pending landmark designation. Unfortunately, the Commission never acted to designate and due to a law passed by the City Council, these rare survivors will lose their protected status unless the Commission acts to designate.
Please click this link to SEND A LETTER to the Commission Chair supporting landmark designation:
These rare surviving Federal style houses represent the architecture style of the young American republic… These structures help give us a sense of historic place and time…
Federal era houses are being demolished all over the city at an alarming rate.
The Bowery has lost several of them, including those at 135 Bowery and at 35 Cooper Square.
Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation has been campaigning on behalf of the Federals for years.
Links to the descriptions of 206 Bowery and 22 East Broadway