Council Votes Historic District In 38-Block Section of Queens
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: January 27, 1994
After years in which preservationists said their efforts were frustrated in Queens, the City Council voted unanimously yesterday to designate as a historic district an elegant swath of almost 500 apartment buildings and homes in Jackson Heights that in the early 1900's gave garden apartments their name.
The Council's vote creates only the second designated historic district in Queens. The first is a much smaller district of 19th-century town houses on two blocks in Hunters Point that was designated 26 years ago, shortly after the city's strict landmarks law first took effect.
The designation comes after years of what preservationists said was neglect and hostility toward their efforts in Queens, which has fewer landmarks than any other borough. Preservationists say the lack of designations has caused the destruction of several of the borough's architectural and historical treasures.
"This will bring pride and stability and everything else that this community deserves," said Adrienne M. Sumowicz, the president of the Jackson Heights Beautification Group, which led a three-year effort to win the designation. "This community is a real gem." Other Bills
In other action, several bills were introduced that Council leaders said will dominate the agenda this year. With the Speaker's blessing, Councilwoman Mary Pinkett of Brooklyn submitted a bill that would allow the Council to hold hearings on efforts to turn city agencies over to private companies.
The bill is likely to become a battleground between Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who favors privatization as a cure for many budget problems, and Council Speaker Peter F. Vallone, who has said he wants to influence such efforts.
Other bills that were reintroduced from the last session included a measure to regulate horse carriages that former Mayor David N. Dinkins vetoed, a measure that would give homosexual couples the same legal rights as heterosexual married couples and a clinic-access bill that gives women and doctors the ability to sue anti-abortion demonstrators who harass them or prevent them from entering abortion clinics.
The clinic-access bill, sponsored by Ronnie Eldridge of Manhattan, has a good chance of success because Mr. Vallone has promised to support it. The domestic partnership measure, introduced by Thomas Duane, a Greenwich Village Democrat, has an uphill battle because Mr. Vallone and many of his allies have yet to support it, arguing it would be pre-empted by state law. New Political Reality
The Council's vote to create the Jackson Heights Historic District underscored an emerging political reality on questions of landmarks: The support of the Council member whose district includes the proposed landmark is essential. Since the Council took over the power to approve landmarks when the the Board of Estimate was abolished in 1990, other Council members have generally deferred to the local member.
While preservationists welcomed the Jackson Heights designation, some faulted the tendency to abide by the desires of local lawmakers.
"I hope this doesn't mean City Council members have in effect a veto power over designations in their districts," said Jeffrey A. Kroessler, the president of the Queensborough Preservation League, which has long maintained that the borough's landmarks have been neglected by political leaders in Manhattan and sometimes by residents in Queens as well.
Unlike some previous attempts to designate landmarks in Queens, including the bitter fight over the Steinway Houses in 1975, the effort in Jackson Heights had broad support from residents, merchants and local elected officials, including Councilman John D. Sabini and Councilwoman Helen M. Marshall, whose districts share the new historic district.
The designation covers 38 blocks, roughly from Northern to Roosevelt Boulevards and from 76th to 88th Streets. Beginning in the 1910's, one company, the Queensboro Corporation, built most of the apartment buildings and homes in Jackson Heights, envisioning a unified community modeled on the garden suburbs of England and Germany.
The apartment buildings -- with names like the Greystones, the Towers and the Chateau -- straddled arboreal sidewalks and luxurious gardens and included ornate architectural flourishes. They also had some of the first amenities of modern urban living, like driveways for cars and self-operating elevators.
With the designation, the landmark law restricts the demolition or exterior alteration of any building within the district's boundaries by requiring special approval of the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Since the law took effect in 1965, the city has designated 1,005 individual landmarks and 62 historic districts, the vast majority in Manhattan and Brooklyn. In Queens, which was first settled by the Dutch in the 1600's, though largely developed in this century, there are only 38 landmarks and the two historic districts.
The scarcity has been attributed by preservationists and political leaders to the borough's distrust of rules from Manhattan, to neglect by the landmarks commission and to the opposition of the former Borough President, Donald R. Manes, who often used his power on the Board of Estimate to block designations.
Speaking before the Council's vote, Mr. Sabini said he hoped the designation would protect the neighborhood and would demonstrate a new interest in landmarks preservation in Queens.
Of previous efforts, Mr. Sabini said, "Cooperation has not always been the spirit of the day."