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Group fights to save LES streetscape

By Marlene Naanes | mnaanes@am-ny.com

6:31 PM EDT, May 20, 2008

Historic Trust Releases List Of Most Endangered US Places

An aging tenement building on Orchard Street in the Lower East Side May 20, 2008 in New York City. Manhattan's Lower East Side, a magnet for the first generation of immigrants to America, was included in the National Trust for Historic Preservation "11 Most Endangered Historic Places'' of 2008. (Spencer Platt, Getty Images / May 20, 2008)

Cluttered with condos, hotels and boutiques, the Lower East Side's tenement streetscape has long been fading. But a national preservation group says there's still hope to save the neighborhood before it is totally unrecognizable.

"This is one of the most important neighborhoods in America," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "It's very distinctive and very much admired and cared for by people not just in New York but all over this country because so many ancestors came through here. This was kind of the entry point to America and it still is."

Yesterday, the organization designated the Lower East Side as one of America's 11 "most endangered historic places" in its annual list of architectural, cultural and natural locations at risk of destruction.

The designation has created support to save many of the 200 places that made its past 20 lists.

"It's crazy how much it's changed," said longtime Lower East Side resident and coffee shop owner Carmine Morales. "It's always been a neighborhood of immigrants and poor folk but not any more -- you gotta be rich. I always joke, the next thing I know Donald Trump is going to be my neighbor."

Morales' family originally came from Italy and Puerto Rico, and he grew up in a tenement-style building a block from Classic Coffee Shop, which he and his father opened in 1976.

He said tearing down the old buildings and replacing them with sleek, high-priced condos is changing the face of the neighborhood and erasing its history.

Just last year, 11 Lower East Side buildings were slated to be demolished, compared to one in 2006, the group said.

The national organization is backing a local effort that began in 2006 to create a protected landmark district in the Lower East Side that would be roughly bounded by Allen, Delancey, Essex and Division streets.

"If we're successful, for years to come we'll be able to see and feel what it was like for immigrants," said Ruth Abram, founder and president of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, part of the coalition trying to preserve the neighborhood. "It's certainly important to underscore what contribution immigrants made in America and preserve that contribution."

The City Landmarks Commission is combing through a recent survey of 2,300 buildings in the neighborhood to see if any merit potential historic districts or individual landmarks.

The commission already landmarked about 25 buildings in the Lower East Side, including two synagogues in the proposed historic district are landmarked. The process for historic districts, which would protect buildings¹ facades, in other neighborhoods has taken years. There are 92 historic districts across the city.