The Municipal Art Society of New York

Last month, three CITI Youth interns were honored by their community boards. These students, who have worked as map technicians for the past year, are part of the CITI Youth program, a project of the MAS Planning Center. The CITI Youth program helps young people connect with their community through the use of technology. Using the website www.myciti.org, CITI interns create and display maps at community board meetings to help facilitate the community decision-making process. Over 30 CITI interns are currently working as map technicians in community boards throughout the city.

CITI interns Merlin Valdez and Brandon Rutishauser are map technicians at Bronx CB 7 (Fordham). According to Merlin, their maps have earned them a reputation as the “wizards of technology”, with Bronx CB 7 routinely expressing their appreciation of the maps and the student’s service. Brandon and Merlin were both awarded with the 2009 Bronx Community Board 7 Unsung Hero Award at their June board meeting. The students, who are new to the program, have been enthusiastically invited to continue working at the board this coming fall. Continue Reading>>

MyCITI.org now links you directly to the City’s newest mapping resource: NYCityMap. Brought to you by the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication (DOITT), the new map features a much expanded selection of data, aerial photos, and much more. You can search by address, block and lot, or intersection.

To help learn to navigate this new tool, click here for a step-by-step training guide, or contact Sideya Sherman at the MAS Planning Center or ssherman@mas.org for assistance and upcoming trainings.

Your community board provides a range of services vital to your community’s welfare, from overseeing essential municipal services, to ensuring that you have a voice in local decision-making, to serving as a place-based provider of constituent services, but each and every one of our city’s community boards is currently facing a budget cut of $35,000.

In response to this, join all five of New York’s borough presidents, all 59 of New York’s community boards, and community advocates of all stripes next Tuesday, June 9, at 11:00 a.m., on the steps of City Hall, to call on the City Council for the restoration of community board budgets for the coming fiscal year. (This rally has been organized by the Manhattan Borough President’s Office.)

Community boards are the public’s interface with New York City’s enormous and complex government, and they are also government agencies’ conduit to the public. Meaning, for example, that when the Department of Health needs to update a community on the spread of the H1N1 virus, it asks the community board for help with outreach. Continue Reading>>

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Ahead of this year’s Yolanda Garcia Community Planner Award (YGCPA), MAS’ Lacey Tauber talks community activism in the Far Rockaways with last years’ YGCPA winner, Jeanne Dupont, Executive Director of the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance.

MAS is accepting nominations for this year’s award through Friday, May 29 (2009). For more information, and a copy of the nomination form, click here.

Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden at 29-19 24 Avenue in Astoria, Queens was nominated to the Census of Places that Matter for serving up Czech culture by the pitcher.

In 1906, the Sovak family, together with the Bohemian Citizens Benevolent Society (which had been founded in 1892), purchased three parcels of farmland along 24th Avenue in Astoria, Queens. Designed by Frank Chmelik, the modest, two-story Bohemian Hall was completed in 1911.

From the very beginning, a collection of lots that adjoin the Hall were used as an outdoor gathering space.  In the 1930s, this land was donated to the Society and it was officially put to use as a beer garden.  During the first half of the century, the courtyard at Bohemian Hall was just one of many European-style picnic parks. Continue Reading>>

While the recession cuts deep into New Yorker’s pocketbooks and neighborhoods, we can take strength from the fact that the city has weathered hard times before. Many of our neighborhoods — Melrose, Park Slope, Tribeca, Bushwick — have come to symbolize the enormous regenerative power of the city — power that comes about when when communities are actively involved in planning.

Developers know that times of recession are times to plan for the comeback — communities know this, too. New York City is changing and the Livable Neighborhoods Program is designed to help communities plan for equitable and sustainable change — now and into the future. Our next full day of training will be Saturday, May 16 at Hunter College. Continue Reading>>

The Landmarks Preservation Commission today designated two new landmarks in the Bronx and added two other items to the “calendar” – which is the first step in the designation process. The city’s newest landmarks, the Hunts Point and Woodstock branches of the New York Public Library, are both Carnegie libraries, located in the Bronx. The items that were calendared are a proposed Ridgewood South Historic District in Queens and a private residence in Staten Island.

The two landmarked libraries were created using the famous 1901 grant from Andrew Carnegie. The grant was intended for the design and construction of new library buildings, allowing the New York Public Library to create 39 neighborhood branches. Continue Reading>>

On Tuesday, April 21 at 6:30 pm, MAS will host a panel discussion on Transforming America’s Cities: Creating a National Urban Policy.

In this podcast, urban planning professor Genie Birch talks with Eve Baron of MAS about the changing political landscape and potential opportunities for the metropolitan region in light of President Obama’s creation of an Office of National Policy to oversee all federal urban programs and integrate policies linking transportation, housing, economic development, energy, and environmental issues.

Moderated by Vicki Been, director of NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, this panel featuring leading academics, policymakers, and practitioners will examine the implications for New York City and consider innovative solutions to create a more sustainable future in the metropolitan region.  Additional panelists will include Christopher Jones, vice president for research at the Regional Plan Association, Toni Griffin, director of community development for the City of Newark, and Anthony Shorris, director of the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at NYU.

$15, $10 MAS members.  Purchase tickets online at www.mas.org or call 212 935 2075.

Far Rockaway, Queens consists of two square miles of barrier island just across the bay from JFK Airport and just west of the Nassau County line. Its population is diverse, including a large Orthodox Jewish community, and immigrants from Russia, Jamaica, Guyana, and Guatemala. While there are some upscale areas, particularly near the Long Island border, a large percentage of residents live in public or rent-regulated housing. The area has been hit hard recently by a double-whammy: a wave of foreclosures due to the ongoing mortgage crisis, and a nearly simultaneous wave of new, often luxury, development.

Jeanne DuPont was inspired to start the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance (RWA) when she saw that much of that new development was proceeding with little regard for current residents. Continue Reading>>

Yesterday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) voted in favor of designating 3 new individual landmarks: the Museum building and the Fountain of Life and Tulip Tree Allée at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx; Jamaica High School in Queens; and the Rutan-Journeay residence in Tottenville, Staten Island.

In a disappointing turn of events, the Greek Revival-style Dissosway-Cole House on Arthur Kill Road in Staten Island was deemed too altered for NYC landmark status after incurring fire damage and subsequent replacement of some of the building’s original fabric. MAS had testified in favor of all four designations, stating in particular that there was enough remaining material and documentation at the Dissosway-Cole House to allow for an authentic restoration.

The commission also held public hearings on 11 designation proposals, and MAS testified in favor of all of them. Continue Reading>>

The Mathews Model Flats, located in the Ridgewood, Long Island City, Woodside and Elmhurst neighborhoods of Queens, were nominated to the Census of Places that Matter for providing dignified affordable housing for New Yorkers.

The Mathews Model Flats were built by speculative developer Gustave X. Mathews and designed by Louis Allmendinger in the early part of the 20th Century. Considered to be some of the most innovative housing in the city, these “new law” tenements were designed with more space and better sanitation than their overcrowded 19th Century counterparts. By making use of generous lot sizes, introducing wide air shafts to provide improved air circulation and light quality, including bathrooms in each unit, and limiting the number of apartments per floor, Mathews established a new housing paradigm that was a welcome departure from the congested tenements of the Lower East Side. Continue Reading>>

On Tuesday, February 17th, the LPC took the first step in the landmark designation process when it “calendared” five new items. The collection of potential new landmarks includes the Ridgewood Theater in Queens, the Brooklyn Union Gas Company Building, the West-Park Presbyterian Church, the Fort Washington Presbyterian Church and the proposed Audubon Park Historic District in Manhattan.
Check out the slide show above to learn more about the five new proposed landmarks.

Answer: They are both scheduled to become NYC landmarks tomorrow (Tuesday, February 10th). Continue Reading>>

On Tuesday, February 10, MAS will be supporting the designation of the Schleicher Mansion at 11-41 123rd Street in College Point, Queens, at the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s public hearing. The house dates to the 1850s and was originally the home of a German immigrant by the name of Herman A. Schleicher.

Schleicher’s estate was one of many in College Point in the mid-nineteenth century. However, by the late-nineteenth century, his estate had been divided up into smaller lots and the Italianate house was converted into a hotel (named the Grand View Hotel because of its views of the East River and Flushing Bay). Today, the Schleicher Mansion, now an apartment building, is a rare intact survivor of the once-common grand homes of College Point. MAS looks forward to its designation as a NYC landmark.

A new map produced by MAS in collaboration with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) provides a citywide look at LPC-designated districts, scenic landmarks, interior landmarks, and individual landmarks. The map is subdivided by city council districts.

A total of 11 new historic districts were designated between January 2006 and June 2008, thanks in part to the increased funding the City Council (at MAS’ urging) has provided the LPC in recent years for research, survey, and designation work. Drawing on previous data from the LPC and the Department of City Planning, the new map summarizes their location in addition to previously-designated resources.

A quick look at the map (download the PDF here) confirms that there are more landmark designations in Manhattan that in any other borough, yet of the 11 new districts, six are located in boroughs other than Manhattan (four in Brooklyn, and one each in Queens and the Bronx). An analysis of total acreage of recently-added districts also showed that nearly 90 percent was added in boroughs other than Manhattan (37 percent in Brooklyn, 35 percent in the Bronx, and 17 percent in Queens). If the LPC is to continue its work to expand designations across the city, it will need the continued support of people who care about the city’s diverse urban forms.