Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Perry Avenue Named as NYC's 100th Historic District

Photo by ErLu

It's official...The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously yesterday to approve the designation of the Perry Avenue Historic District! Perry Avenue is NYC's 100th historic district, and the Bronx's 10th. Click here for a NY Times piece regarding the district.

Here's some background info from the LPC press release:
The Perry Avenue Historic District, located in Bedford Park, is comprised of nine well-preserved single-family residences constructed between 1910 and 1912, and designed in the Queen Anne style. The buildings are located on the northwest side of Perry Avenue between Bedford Park Boulevard and East 201st Street.

Bedford Park, named for a London suburb, was carved out of a 230-acre tract where a racetrack was once located. Its first houses, large Queen Anne-style cottages on spacious lots, were built in the early 1880s, at around the time of the arrival of daily commuter trains to nearby stations. Development accelerated further when several rail lines were extended to the neighborhood, and in 1910, Bronx builder George D. Kingston bought the Perry Avenue lots and hired architect Charles S. Clark to design the residences.

Clark is responsible for a number of institutional, commercial, residential and industrial structures in the Bronx and Manhattan, including several large Art Deco-style apartment houses near the Grand Concourse and eight houses that are now part of the Longwood Historic District in the south Bronx.

The district’s nine three-story houses, which sit atop picturesque fieldstone walls that enclose small front yards, were built to house the middle class, and many of them were originally owned by German immigrants. They included four bedrooms, two bathrooms, cellars, laundry areas and servant’s quarters.

The wood-frame residences feature alternating facades of orange and red brick and are unified by such details as sloping slate roofs, splayed lintels and iron cornices. Some of them were constructed with three-sided porches, while others have projecting porticos.
The LPC will also be moving forward with proposals to designate a historic district along the Grand Concourse, along with eight other buildings. Click here to read to full release.

We first learned about the possibility of a Perry Avenue Historic District about 10 months ago, and we are so excited that this has finally gone through. The Perry Avenue residences are a throwback to another time, and it's comforting to know that they will be preserved. Good news for Bedford Park!

~ErLu

3 comments:

anthony rivieccio said...

About 1 year ago, many officals from BMCA and the neighborhood went to Councilman Oliver Koppell to ask for this designation-and yes Erin, we could not agree more.

While bias (living on E201 & Perry) , I would be remiss if we did not thank THE WHOLE COMMUNITY-just for keeping it the way it is.

I have spojen to many of those home owners who discuss their properties wirh pride

and every morning i get up, jog around the neighborhood and the parkway , and the best part-like you said- you are almost transported-to another time-a quiet time-a time-our city needs more of

THANKS FOR ANNOUNCIMNG ERIN

Guywithacause said...

I saw the picture and thought wow, they look just like the homes in the Longwood section of the Southern Bronx, on Hewitt Place. The entire disctrict on Hewitt Place were designated Landmarks decades ago however. Nice to know who the architect was though.

Jim said...

Very nice and modern.