Landmarks to Consider Widening Historic District

On Oct. 1, the commission will hold a public hearing on extending the Tribeca South Historic District to include 27 buildings on the south side of Chambers Street and on Murray and Warren streets between West Broadway and Church Street.

If the expansion is approved, owners will need the commission’s approval to demolish their buildings or make alterations that are visible from the street.

The commission’s chair, Sherida Paulsen, announced the hearing at a rare meeting with members of Community Board 1’s Landmarks Committee in July. She agreed to meet with the community regularly, possibly every two months.

The proposed extension represents only a small portion of the area that CB1 and Downtown preservationists want included in the historic district, which was created in 1991 after the community had proposed a much larger district. At the July meeting, community board members wanted to know when additional blocks would be considered.

"We have passed the 10-year mark; we don’t want to pass the 20-year mark," said CB1 chair Madelyn Wils of the community’s effort to protect more Tribeca buildings. Paulsen said the commission would "look at" other areas, but that there was no timetable.

Community leaders are pushing to extend the historic district in hope of avoiding more rooftop additions that don’t fit the neighborhood’s archtectural context, like several that have been erected on Warren Street buildings in recent years.

Paulsen noted at the meeting that there is no height limit for rooftop additions in historic districts, although developers are now asked to build mock-ups on the roofs so that Landmarks commissioners can assess the visibility of proposed structures.

Paulsen said the commission was moving forward to designate 325 Broadway, at the corner of Worth Street, as an individual landmark, and that there was "a long list of very worthy buildings" proposed for landmark designation that the commission would like to review "in the near future."

Bruce Ehrmann, chair of CB1’s Landmarks Committee, raised concerns about buildings just south of the World Trade Center site that may be historic but could be torn down as part of the area’s redevelopment.

Paulsen said the commission will consider buildings in that area for landmark designation. "We’re aware that there’s some fine architecture on those blocks," she said. "We’ll see how that jives with the record of buildings we have designated in the past."