West-Park Presbyterian Church 11/1 Meeting: Speak Up and Sign On!

Come Support Landmark Protection of West-Park Presbyterian Church!

SHOW UP…

On Thursday, November 1, at 7:00 PM, Community Board 7’s Parks and Preservation Committee will consider passing a resolution calling on the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission to hold an official landmark designation hearing for the imperiled West-Park Presbyterian Church (that glorious, 1890s, red-sandstone building anchoring the northeast corner of 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue - see below for information on the building's architectural and historical significance; to view photos and other information, go to www.landmarkwest.org/westpark).

The location of the meeting will be B'nai Jeshurun, 257 West 88th Street (between Broadway and West End Avenue). (See www.cb7.org “Calendar of Events” for the most up-to-date scheduling information)

SPEAK UP!

You are encouraged to speak out on this urgent issue. Beyond a doubt, West-Park Presbyterian Church deserves formal landmark protection. And landmark designation may well be the only way to save this beautiful and rare part of our city's history!

The agenda for the November 1 CB7 meeting will include a presentation by Mosette Broderick (Director of the Urban Design and Architectural History Program at NYU) and colleagues on the building’s design by renowned architects Leopold Eidlitz and Henry Kilburn.

SIGN ON!

Show the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Community Board 7 and public officials that you support a landmarks hearing for West-Park by going to http://www.petitiononline.com/westpark/petition.html for an online petition. Send it to your friends and neighbors. Information about writing letters to elected officials is available through www.landmarkwest.org/westpark.

The Case for Designating West-Park As An Official NYC Landmark:

Art historian Barry Bergdoll (Columbia professor and Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA) called West-Park "one of the architecturally most distinguished and historically most important of Manhattan's surviving Nineteenth century churches...West Park Presbyterian Church is one of the very finest examples of this vital moment in American architectural history still standing in New York, and the fact that it stands in a place so important to the architctural order of the city makes it a crossroads both of a neighborhood and of a key chapter in American architectural development" (letter dated 2004).

In a 2003 letter to the Landmarks Commission, Andrew S. Dolkart (architectural historian, writer and the James Marston Fitch Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University) stated: "The West-Park Presbyterian Church is unquestionably one of the most beautiful religious structures on the Upper West Side. The bold massing of this Romanesque Revival style building, the soaring tower anchoring the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and West 86th Street, and the extraordinary deep red sandstone cladding combine to create a building of singular power."
Please call LANDMARK WEST! at (212) 496-8110 for additional information.