City Council's Governmental Operations Committee Hearing on LPC May 16

At 10 AM on Monday, May 16, in the Hearing Room entered from front right of the City Council Chamber on the 2nd floor of City Hall, the Governmental Operations Committee of the City Council, chaired by Bill Perkins, Deputy Majority Leader, will hold a Hearing on the Administrative Procedures of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Here is an opportunity for us to focus further within City Council on the procedural problems that have led the Commission – rather than protect the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and the Cathedral Close from development pressures – to decalendar two development sites from within the historic Close, long calendared for landmark designation, and cut these large segments of the Cathedral’s precinct forever free from any protection or Commission jurisdiction or possibility of landmark designation.

The Hearing will open with six panels of five persons each which Michael Henry Adams is arranging, centered on 2 Columbus Circle; Harlem sites; Churches; Industrial and other cultural sites; Historic Districts; and Remedies for failed procedures. Michael has asked me to organize a seventh which will examine the Commission’s failure to protect the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and its Close.

But many more than five of us must attend this Hearing to lay out our many points of view, our varied and diverse perceptions as to the Commission’s failure to protect one of the most magnificent religious monuments to be found world-wide, what may be the grandest reception of the Western Gothic in the new world, our soon to be designated National Historic Landmark, and our city’s most majestic architectural treasure.

After the seven panels, all present will be invited to testify on the topic of concern to them – I will be testifying in this phase rather than on the panel of five and I urge each of you to clear your May 16th calendar and come to City Hall to join me and others in an effort to convey to the Landmarks Preservation Commission – hopefully Commission Chair John Tierney will be present – our urgent concern about their failure to protect this singular national treasure from development pressures arising within the Cathedral’s current Corporation leadership, and that we demand that the Commission correct its procedures and back up to start again in their attempt to perceive, probe, and carefully evaluate their responsibility toward the irreplaceable value of the majestic Cathedral Church and Close.

Please email me as above or call the Morningside Heights Historic District Committee 212.665.8535 or our home number 212.866.6058 if I can be of any help with information for your testimony.

City Council testimony is normally limited to three minutes; it will assist the work of the Governmental Operations Committee if you can provide ten copies of your testimony (no more than two double-spaced typed pages) for the Hearing record.

Carolyn Kent
for the Campaign to Save the Cathedral
affiliated with Morningside Heights Historic District Committee