The Preservation Diaries - 'Blame It On Rothko' - Published May 6, 2010

Thanks for reading The Preservation Diaries written by author and 93rd Street Beautification Association Co-Chair, Susan Kathryn Hefti, and published online by NYC Theater Critic and Huffington Post contributor, Leonard Jacobs, at his popular web site - The Clyde Fitch Report: We really appreciate your interest in the column!

We would now like to invite you all to read the latest installment 'Blame It On Rothko' by just clicking on this link: http//www.clydefitchreport.com/2010/05/blame-it-on-rothko/!

Thanks for your continued interest in and support for our ongoing preservation campaign!

Please keep in touch!

Best wishes from historic Marx Brothers Place in Carnegie Hill NYC!

Uptown Is For People

Marx Brothers Place is an historic little block in the heart of Carnegie Hill. Informed by its cultural pedigree, which boasts the biographies of both the Marx Brothers & the Loewe brothers; the antiquity of its houses, which include brownstones older than any of the brownstones already in the Carnegie Hill Historic District and its unique stepped-down roofscape, Marx Brothers Place remains a cherished gem in NYC's collection of historic neighborhoods.

It also happens to be the sort of block where folks know the names of their neighbors' dogs and where neighborhood children pitch in to help plant daffodil and tulip bulbs in the tree pits each fall. In other words, Marx Brothers Place is a real NYC neighborhood.

And despite the fact that for decades Marx Brothers Place has been a quiet destination mapped for travelers longing to see the childhood home of the most beloved comic family in film history, it's steep hill and far-north geography (most people get nose bleeds above 86th Street) had insulated the block from the hungry glare of big-time developers.

But when money got really, really cheap, and the NYC Department of Buildings got really, really corrupt, the residents of Marx Brothers Place got a crash course in the lethal difference between being historic and being designated historic in NYC. For, as we all know by now, being historic in NYC provides absolutely no legal protection from an oncoming bulldozer. History gets a reprieve from that particular weapon of mass demolition only if the history has already been tagged and duly registered with the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Less than 30 feet outside the boundary line of the Carnegie Hill Historic District (the middle of Lexington Avenue at 93rd Street), Marx Brothers Place is a sitting duck for eager developers with visions of demolition dancing through their heads.

And in these difficult economic times, which haven't slowed down the speculators on East 93rd Street one bit, this persistent threat to the character of our block evokes the more ubiquitous dread that threatens to rob our city of one of its most vital assets: NYC's historic neighborhoods. For, it's blocks like Marx Brothers Place (is there another block so unique?) that help to inform the character of these great old neighborhoods.

In turn, NYC's historic neighborhoods serve as anchors, even magnets, for our community, helping the city to weather good times and bad. But without the people that populate these historic neighborhoods, many of whom will leave if NYC continues to fail to protect the historic character that attracted them in the first place, the probability of NYC surviving the current economic downturn becomes severely challenged.

Faced with the harsh practical reality of the long-term irreparable harm hovering over this beloved NYC block, one might think Community Board 8 and the Bloomberg Administration would be busy at work doing all they can to help celebrate and protect Marx Brothers Place: A truly unique and historic neighborhood.

Instead, CB8 and the Mayor's office have stood by passively nodding as developers dreams of out-of-scale and over-priced condominiums are waved through the same red tape that seems to slow down everybody else in this town - except builders with a backhoe.

If the Bloomberg Administration doesn't move quickly to protect Marx Brothers Place and the other vulnerable historic neighborhoods uptown, not only will our city suffer dearly from the loss of these great historic treasures, but it will begin to resemble the Wild West with urban tumble weed replacing residents who had once converged for a boom that has now gone bust.

Uptown is for people. It's a real neighborhood, not just a spot on a developer's map existing for the pleasure and short-term profit of speculators cranked up on foreign money and the ease with which they have been able to compromise the NYC Department of Buildings.



Please be sure to share this message with all your friends & colleagues
and let LPC know that you want the city to protect
Marx Brothers Place by just clicking on this link!


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Thanks for your continued interest in historic Marx Brothers Place !

For more information about the 93rd Street Beautification Association or Marx Brothers Place, please contact us at 93rdst.beautification@gmail.com or 212.969.8138 or visit our blogs at: Save Marx Brothers Place or The Marx Brothers Place Report.

If you wish to make a tax-deductible contribution to help keep the preservation campaign alive, please just click on this link.

And please don't forget to visit our YouTube Channel Page for all of our latest videos and movies. We also invite you to join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or view our Marx Brothers Place MySpace profile.

The Demolition Review Bill - The Third Rail in NYC Politics!

Over the last decade, American cities with significant historic inventory have wisely taken steps to protect the architectural and cultural legacies they have been privileged to inherit. Chicago, Boston and nearby Yonkers, NY, for example, have all enacted laws requiring that a few key questions be answered before rubber stamping a Demolition Permit.

But sadly, the proverbial rubber stamp remains current practice in our city (sort of the Real Estate industry's version of "don't ask, don't tell") even though only 1% of its structures are currently landmarked (a status which does confer a review process prior to demolition), leaving the rest vulnerable to demolition with no questions asked (like, for instance, was it the nation's first Presidential abode?).

Now, given the fact that once NYC's historic neighborhoods and structures are gone, no amount of wand waving will ever be able to bring them back (ref. the old Penn Station), we really don't think it's much to ask that, before the NYC Department of Buildings gives a developer the green light to demolish a structure which is 50 years or older, the city first find out whether the structure happens to be historically significant.

If the goal is to manage sustainable development without destroying the incomparable character of NYC, its historic neighborhoods and its economy, this certainly seems a wise and reasonable approach. In fact, one might even call it a no-brainer.

And yet, here in our city, a municipality not exactly known for its political timidity, finding an advocate for a Demolition Review bill in the NYC Council is like trying to find a politician in West Virginia willing to advocate against the Coal Industry.

Now, we understand the politics that make NY City Council Members reluctant (read: allergic) to want to shepard a bill which seems to poke a finger in the eye of the very industry that has proven so generous to their re-election campaigns.

And, of course, now that Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau (who's got more game at 90 than most of us had at 29) has made the world aware that the NYC Department of Buildings (remember, the department charged with the duty to issue Demolition Permits?) has for years been operating as a front for the Luchese crime family, we are even more sensitive to the City Council's reluctance to wade too deep into these dark and chilly waters.

But taking a cue from the irrepressible Marx Brothers, wade they must: After moving on from their beloved childhood block in Carnegie Hill, the Marx Brothers lived for a time (before coming to their senses and returning to the greatest city in the world!) in the city of Chicago. And when that city decided the most politically palatable way to manage the energetic rash of demolitions there was to commission an inventory of its historic structures, the Marx Brothers suddenly reappeared - posthumously presiding over a rather public exegesis in managing development in the 21st century. You see, Chicago's inventory list of historic structures missed a very obvious cultural gem: the Marx Brothers house!

Well, those spunky Chicago denizens would be having none of that! And having learned from the experience that an inventory list was simply not practicable, they not only made sure the Marx Brothers house was individually protected, they also crafted and passed a Demolition Review law ensuring that such an embarrassing oversight would never happen again!

Last year, the 93rd Street Beautification Association submitted a draft of just such a Demolition Review bill to the NYC Council. That proposed NYC law is based upon the similar law enacted by the city of Boston. And while Boston may have an absolutely wretched baseball team, we must admit it does know a thing or two about history and its value.

So, now all we need is one (we'll take more!) brave soul in the NY City Council to step up to the plate on behalf of our city's historic neighborhoods, its architectural and cultural heritage, and the countless historic structures that remain vulnerable to summary demolition throughout all five boroughs.

We hope the NY City Council will do the right thing and push full steam ahead to finally pass a Demolition Review bill that will protect our city's future by protecting its history!

And in the meantime, please let the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission know that you want the city to protect historic Marx Brothers Place by just clicking on this link. Thanks!!!

Please be sure to share this email with all your friends and colleagues!

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Thanks for your continued interest in historic Marx Brothers Place !

For more information about the 93rd Street Beautification Association or Marx Brothers Place, please contact us at 93rdst.beautification@gmail.com or 212.969.8138 or visit our blogs at: Save Marx Brothers Place or The Marx Brothers Place Report.

If you wish to make a tax-deductible contribution to help keep the preservation campaign alive, please just click on this link.

And please don't forget to visit our YouTube Channel Page for all of our latest videos and movies. We also invite you to join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or view our Marx Brothers Place MySpace profile.

Harpo Has Spoken: Now It's Up To The Rest Of Us!

Between NYC Council Members perpetually prowling for campaign contributions from Real Estate Developers to fuel their next election no matter what new office they may seek; a do-nothing-for-anybody-but-themselves Community Board and a Building Department, which under the close watch of Mayor Bloomberg had actually been operating as a public employment agency for one of the most powerful Mafia Crime Families on the East Coast, it's little wonder that Greystone Development, with its stable of New Jersey license plates clogging our street every day, got away with a shocking mid-block incursion on the R8B Zoned Carnegie Hill stretch popularly known as Marx Brothers Place.

But this latest string of criminal indictments not only reveals the NYC Building Department to be far more fox than henhouse, it smacks of the Bloomberg Administration's laissez-faire attitude about who it does business with - just as long as Real Estate Developers don't stand idle. And while all New Yorkers root for renewed and sustainable prosperity for the greatest city in the world, most of us realize that prosperity at any price is not prosperity at all.

The corrosive corruption that has finally eaten through whatever shred of integrity may have been left of NYC's Real Estate Development industry tragically demolished more than historic 19th century houses with great potential: It took with it human lives and all they might have become.

The people of NYC expect and deserve much better from those who have been granted the privilege to make decisions that effect our community, its continued development, its history, the lives of its residents and its future.

As most of you know, Harpo has already spoken on this subject. So now it's time for the rest of us to do the same.

Please take a moment right now to click on this link and send the message to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission asking LPC Chairman Robert Tierney to calendar the 93rd Street Beautification Association's Request for Evaluation (RFE) for a public hearing to consider the Association's request that LPC extend the Carnegie Hill Historic District one block east to protect the incomparable historic Marx Brothers Place.


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Thanks for your continued interest in historic Marx Brothers Place !

For more information about the 93rd Street Beautification Association or Marx Brothers Place, please contact us at 93rdst.beautification@gmail.com or 212.969.8138 or visit our blogs at: Save Marx Brothers Place or The Marx Brothers Place Report.

If you wish to make a tax-deductible contribution to help keep the preservation campaign alive, please just click on this link.

And please don't forget to visit our YouTube Channel Page for all of our latest videos and movies. We also invite you to join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or view our Marx Brothers Place MySpace profile.

Marx Brothers Place: Official Globe-Trotter!

Most New Yorkers spend these last two weeks of August, better known as the dog days of summer, off at the beach; up in the mountains; on a pilgrimage to Yasgur's Farm or just squirreled away in the most air conditioned spot they can possibly find. But, just like everything else about it, Marx Brothers Place marches to its own drum.

Determined to stay put despite the heat, thermal or political, Marx Brothers Place remains firmly perched on its quiet little stretch of the Carnegie Hill. However, having taken on a life of its own, the preservation campaign launched to protect this beloved little block, has been off globe-trotting, flexing its independent muscles & enjoying the grand summer tour!

First, the-little-campaign-that-could made its way all across the pond to bloody old England!!! Leave it to the Brits to spot a good fight when they see one!

Not given to letting any grass grow under its feet, however, from there, our intrepid little campaign ricocheted right back into the hazy days of its mother country, plunking itself down on the parched plains of Indiana (Are there plains in Indiana? It always looks rather flat on the news).

So, with the Marx Brothers Place preservation campaign racking up frequent cybermiles all on its own, who knows where our plucky little effort might end up next? Anybody blogging out in the Hamptons?

We hope you are all enjoying the summer, now that it has finally deigned to make a cameo appearance in the Northeast!

And we look forward to seeing you all again in autumn!

Best wishes from Marx Brothers Place!

Please be sure to click on this link & to share this email with all your

friends & colleagues!

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Thanks for your continued interest in historic Marx Brothers Place !

For more information about the 93rd Street Beautification Association or Marx Brothers Place, please contact us at 93rdst.beautification@gmail.com or 212.969.8138 or visit our blogs at: Save Marx Brothers Place or The Marx Brothers Place Report.

If you wish to make a tax-deductible contribution to help keep the preservation campaign alive, please just click on this link.

And please don't forget to visit our YouTube Channel Page for all of our latest videos and movies. We also invite you to join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or view our Marx Brothers Place MySpace profile.

Marx Brothers Place: A Rare Glimpse into NYC's Physical History

The exquisite exhibit entitled, Mannahatta: a Natural History of New York City, at the Museum of the City of New York, vividly illustrates just how wrong-headed the city has been to not act more quickly in protecting the incomparable historic block known as Marx Brothers Place in Carnegie Hill.

The deliberate emphasis here on the word hill may seem self-evident, since the unique topography of Marx Brothers Place, and the incomparable architecture it inspired, has been celebrated by many - and is even featured on the web site Place Matters - a preservation partnership of City Lore & the Municipal Arts Society. But, for some inexplicable reason, this wildly significant fact of history continues to completely allude NYC Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Perhaps they should all carve out some time from their busy schedules and stroll on uptown for a cultural visit with our good neighbors, just north on Fifth Avenue, at the Museum of the City of New York. For, what Mannahatta literally puts into very sharp and colorful relief is precisely what the 93rd Street Beautification Association has been telling Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and LPC for YEARS!

The Lenape Indians, who up until the 17th century had free reign of the island's terrestrial crops along with the plentiful oyster beds that ringed its coastline, gave this glorious (but now sadly fragile) island it's name precisely because of its many hills.

If the island were discovered by fresh eyes today, a more likely moniker for Mannahatta, A.K.A. "The Island of Many Hills", would sadly have to be something more along the lines of: "Fill & Dale".

For, as the very dramatic images at the heart of Mannahatta attest, most of the island's hills were shaved long ago while the low ground areas (or dales), along with the many wetlands and streams, were filled in - making it easier to build on level ground. This instinct to develop against the grain of the land left behind a very different topography than the one that Henry Hudson first spied from his ship in 1609 as he skillfully avoided the island's treacherous shoals.

Marx Brothers Place is one of the very few extant hills remaining in our city's collection, providing a rare example of our beloved island's physical history (one of the many important points made to LPC in our RFE). You see, here on our little summit, the architect, George Beale, whether to save money or out of some prescient respect for nature's own dictates, chose not to do battle with the land. Instead, Beale embraced the hill and let it dictate his architectural designs rather than the other way around.

What's even more amazing is that, unlike the 21st century developers determined to forever change the face of this beloved little block, the 19th century architects that followed Beale onto East 93rd Street, also followed his design lead, continuing Beale's vision of a stepped-down roofscape up and down both sides of the Marx Brothers Place (the Marx Brothers' childhood house forms one-third of the uninterrupted stepped-down roofscape remaining on the north side of the block!).

Building the first Brownstones in Carnegie Hill (houses here pre-date any of the Brownstones ALREADY IN THE CARNEGIE HILL HISTORIC DISTRICT!) in, what has come to be called, a stepped-down configuration - where the roofs actually descend one beneath the other down the hill in succession - George Beale created the most marvelous roofscape in all of Carnegie Hill!

The 93rd Street Beautification Association is deeply grateful for the impressive scholarship and research that went into the MCNY'S Mannahatta exhibit, an exhibit infused with the historic significance of Manhattan's early hills and which unabashedly celebrates these steep eruptions of nature while drawing our attention to their sad eclipse.

This important exhibit, so close to our dear little block both physically and thematically, is also a poignant reminder that the time has come for the City of New York to finally protect this historically significant block before it, too, goes the way of the Lenapes and their hills.

Please help NYC Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg & LPC Chair, Robert Tierney, better appreciate our city's unique history and the value of preserving its architectural, cultural and physical heritage by clicking on this link and sending the message to LPC asking Chairman Tierney to finally calendar for a public hearing the 93rd Street Beautification Association's Request for Evaluation (RFE) today!!!


Thanks for your help, and please be sure to share this email with all your friends and colleagues!

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.....................................................................................

Thanks for your continued interest in historic Marx Brothers Place !

For more information about the 93rd Street Beautification Association or Marx Brothers Place, please contact us at 93rdst.beautification@gmail.com or 212.969.8138 or visit our blogs at: Save Marx Brothers Place or The Marx Brothers Place Report.

If you wish to make a tax-deductible contribution to help keep the preservation campaign alive, please just click on this link.

And please don't forget to visit our YouTube Channel Page for all of our latest videos and movies. We also invite you to join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or view our Marx Brothers Place MySpace profile.

Summer Film Fest Celebrates 93rd Street's Favorite Sons!

While the City of New York continues to drag its feet in recognizing the indelible cultural contributions of the Marx Brothers, and the historic significance of their beloved childhood block in Carnegie Hill, the rest of the world celebrates their genius!

As NY Journalist Leonard Jacobs tells us on his popular web site, The Clyde Fitch Report, the City of Chicago's recent outdoor Summer Film Festival did much more than just feature the Marx Brothers' classic, Duck Soup, it may have actually set a world record!!!

And the unbridled enthusiasm of the estimated 20,000 people that turned out to celebrate the beloved American clowns who proudly called East 93rd Street 'Home Sweet Home' reminds us all that whether or not NYC Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ever steps up to the plate on behalf of historic Marx Brothers Place in NYC, the sheer joy inspired by the work of these comic genuises will endure throughout the world!

As New Yorkers continue to bravely weather the economic downturn, and all the bad news that comes along with it, let's hope the City of New York and its Elected Officials finally take this opportunity to give New Yorkers something to really cheer about!

It's high time NYC honors the most beloved comic geniuses the world has ever known by protecting their historic childhood block in Carnegie Hill! Please save Marx Brothers Place!

For more information about the 93rd Street Beautification Association or Marx Brothers Place, please contact us at 93rdst.beautification@gmail.com.