DOB allowing Hopper-Gibbons home to be heightened illegally

Recent celebration over the New York City Landmarks Commission's first hearing for Lamartine Place may have been premature.

The owners of the Hopper-Gibbons house on 29th Street have been granted a new building permit to vertically and horizontally enlarge this 4 story row house and to construct a penthouse (see below). Right now, there is a cement mixer in their front yard.

The Department of Buildings has allowed this to occur despite the fact that the Landmarks Preservation is considering a historic district designation for this portion of the block. Furthermore, the heightening of this house is illegal according to the sliver law, as indicated by the Department of Building's own audit.

We all need to call 311 and to contact the Department of Buildings and the Mayor's office to prevent this from happening.

It may well be time to picket, hold a press conference, or whatever it takes to preserve these buildings.

Various bits of VERY good news!

We are happy to report that on December 16,2008 the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission calandered the proposed Lamartine Place Historic District for a full hearing, for JANUARY 13!!! We encourage all supporters to turn out for the hearing!

Also, whereas in October we were very worried that work on the penthouse addition to the Hopper-Gibbons house had recommenced, we were able to get a new stop work order due to the help of Assemlymember Richard Gotfried's office.

Furthermore the current owner of the building will not be allowed to build the penthouse addition as he had intended. We received astonishing news re: the Hopper-Gibbons home at no. 339 West 29th (formerly an Underground Railroad Station) from the audit of this site conducted by the Department of Buildings on 10/21. The current owner of the building will not be allowed to build the penthouse addition as he had intended, which would have disrupted the uniform line of the cornices of the row houses on the west half of this block.

According to the DOB, the following objections to this proposed construction were raised in this failed audit: "The proposed penthouse, for an existing building less than 45 feet wide in an R8B zoning district is contrary to Section 23-692 of the Zoning Resolution, and therefore not permitted."!!!

We are elated at this news!

Current owner of the building will not be allowed to build the penthouse addition as he had intended.

We have just received astonishing news re: the Hopper-Gibbons home at no. 339 West 29th (formerly an Underground Railroad Station) from the audit of this site conducted by the Department of Buildings on 10/21. The current owner of the building will not be allowed to build the penthouse addition as he had intended, which would have disrupted the uniform line of the cornices of the row houses on the west half of this block.

According to the DOB, the following objections to this proposed construction were raised in this failed audit: "The proposed penthouse, for an existing building less than 45 feet wide in an R8B zoning district is contrary to Section 23-692 of the Zoning Resolution, and therefore not permitted."!!!

We are elated at this news!

The Hopper-Gibbons home at no. 339 West 29th Street (which served as an Underground Railroad Station) has never been more gravely imperiled than now.

Message from Fern Luskin:

The Hopper-Gibbons home at no. 339 West 29th Street (which served as an Underground Railroad Station) has never been more gravely imperiled than now. The day after the Landmarks Preservation Commission and Community Board 4 held a meeting indicating that they were very interested in making 12 buildings on my block part of a historic district, a construction crew resumed work on this home. I just learned that the owner of no. 339 was granted a new building permit on October 9th for exactly the same plan as last year, i.e., to add a 1 1/2 story penthouse to this 4 story rowhouse. According to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the issuance of this building permit now prevents them from doing anything to help save the building.

However, as I have repeatedly indicated to the Department of Buildings for many months, the steel girders that are now perched on top of the building were built to an illegal height and endanger the fragile bricks below it (erected from 1846-1847). A DOB inspector, in fact, told Julie Finch and me in July that this should never have been allowed in the first place and that the DOB would issue violations and take the owners to court, but this was never done. Instead, on October 2nd, the DOB rescinded the Stop Work Order on this building that had been in place since last October and issued the new building permit the following week, thus ignoring this obvious violation of the law and my warnings of the safety issues this poses. They failed to even give either myself or Assemblyman Gottfried's office any information about the new plan exam that had been approved on September 19th or to reply to my complaint until AFTER allowing the owner to resume building. This was evidently an attempt on their part to render both myself and the elected officials powerless to intervene. Not only has the owner of no. 339 been engaged in illegal practices, endangering the contiguous buildings and innocent passersby, but now the Department of Buildings seems to have been involved in some kind of cover-up by denying the community the information we needed in order to fight this.

Our last hope is to finally prevail by publicizing the zoning violation and, of course, the historical importance of this building, through newspaper articles (Chelsea Now is doing another piece on this as we speak), a press conference and/or a public demonstration, or legal advice. Best of all would be to find a wealthy donor to buy the building! Our first step should be to call 311, complaining about the illegal height of the steel girders (heightening the building to 62 ft. 10 in. rather than the 60 feet allowed).

We need to deluge the Department of Buildings, Mayor Bloombergs' Office and the Office of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn who represents the related district.

The aesthetic unity and small scale of the row houses on 29th Street, fronted by gardens and opposite what is virtually a park, make it a special place within the congested, skyscraper-filled confines of Manhattan, which should not be marred by any alterations. To keep it that way and to reclaim the right to our architectural and historical heritage, we really need to step up to the plate and do something to help ourselves, because the DOB surely isn't.

Fern Luskin

State Historic Preservation Office says Lamartine Place meets the criteria for Historic District

Great news everyone,

The State Historic Preservation Office has determined that the Lamartine Place Historic District (the 29th St. block) meets the criteria for listing to the State and National Registers I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, have a terrific Labor Day weekend.

This could potentially mean not just the Hopper-Gibbons House but also the row of which it is a part.

This would create a nice precedent, which does not alas bind the NYC Landmarks Commision to do the same but could be a positive influence on their own decision making re:the house and or the block.

We would like to thank Julie Finch for her dedication and help in preparing the application for historic district eligiblity, Kathleen Howe of the State Historic Preservation Office, Fern Luskin for her pioneering research, Laurence Frommer, and our elected officials and Community Board (Manhattan CB 4), who have supported the effort to make Lamartine Place a historic district.

NYU symposium to commemorate the two-hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the Transatlanctic Slave Trade by the United States of America

To commemorate the two-hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the Transatlanctic Slave Trade by the United States of America, New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and Africana Studies Program is hosting an international symposium entittled Slave Routes: Resistance, Abolition and creative Progress.

This symposium, supported by UNESCO's Slave Routes Project, will be co-sponsored by NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge, the Organization of Woman Writers of Africa, Inc. and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, with additional support provided by the African Diaspora Slave Routes Organizing Committee. The symposium will be held at New York University and other sites in the New York Metropolitan area October 9-11, 2008.

For more information, please visit: http://africanastudies.as.nyu.edu/object/slaveroutes08

Although it sounds strange, not all white abolitionists worked with black abolitionists. The Hopper-Gibbons family were a noteable exception. In the cartoon from the time that is above we see Isaac Hopper in Quaker Garb, with noted NYC black abolitionist David Ruggles (David Ruggles--the country's first African American bookseller, founding secretary of New York City's Vigilance Committee, assistant to over 600 fugitive slaves including Frederick Douglass--joined them in 1842.) and to the right is Barney Course who assisted many fugitive slaves escape to freedom.

David Ruggles was known as one of the most "notorious" black abolitionists in the United States. Below is a description of a remarkable incident, which took place right around the time Frederick Douglass arrived in New York City, which reveals the energy and courage demanded of Ruggles as he used his pen and life to fight against slavery. The Darg Case, as it was called, caused a furor in New York’s newspapers in the autumn of 1838. Its proceeding exposed the extreme dangers for Ruggles and other anti-slavery warriors.

We look forward to the upcoming biography of David Ruggles by Colgate Professor, Graham Russell Hodges, the working title of which is A Whole-Souled Man: David Ruggles and the Rise of Radical Black Abolitionism.

from Graham Russell Hodges, Hazards of Anti-Slavery Journalism, 2000
(PLEASE SEE: http://www.davidrugglescenter.org/davidruggles.html)


IMAGE OF COMMEMORATIVE PLAQUE AT 36 LISPENARD ST., MANHATTAN, where David Ruggles sheltered Frederick Douglas when he first arrived in NYC.

New York City residents in the 1830s were deeply divided over the future of America’s peculiar institution. It was naturally abhorred by the city’s 16,000 black residents, many of whom had been only recently emancipated by legislative decree ending slavery in New York state in 1827. Much of the city’s elite also worked against it, though by different means. Some elite urbanites favored the strategy of the American Colonization Society, with its plan of sending free blacks back to Africa. Others, notably the Jay family, preferred black self-help efforts at home and donated money to the New York Manumission Society and its principal agency, the African Free School. Though the school had declined recently, it was the alma mater of the city’s black elite. A more radical wing of the Manumission Society sided with immediatists—anti-slavery activists such as William Lloyd Garrison and the Tappan brothers, founders of Dun and Bradstreet—who wanted slavery ended now, not later.

One of the most active Manumission Society members with this view was Barney Corse, who, for more than 10 years, had helped self-emancipated or fugitive slaves come north and helped local blacks protect their freedom against kidnappers. Joining him was the venerable Isaac T. Hopper, a Quaker abolitionist since the 1780s, and Ruggles. This trio had successfully battled city officials and kidnappers on several occasions. At other times, when they lost, Ruggles used his press to blast this unfair system. Some situations were uncomplicated; others, such as the Darg Case, were complex. The facts, as they came out in the subsequent trial, were as follows: On August 25, 1838, John P. Darg, a Virginia slaveholder, arrived in New York City with his slave Thomas Hughes. The issue of Southerners bringing their human chattel to a free state was under intense negotiation between the governors of New York and Virginia, but Darg apparently felt confident about the status of his servant. But a few days later Hughes came to Hopper’s house, seeking refuge. The Quaker, however, was initially reluctant and asked Hughes to leave his home. The next day, the New York Sun, the most vitriolic of the penny press, published a notice offering a reward for the return of Hughes and the $7,000 or $8,000 he had taken with him. Hopper, Corse and perhaps Ruggles served as go-betweens for Darg and Hughes. The slave no longer had all the money, having given some of it to others who helped him escape and a portion to some local gamblers.

Corse and Ruggles decided that returning the cash was moral but turning over Hughes was not. They convinced Darg to free Hughes provided that he gave back as much money as he took. When the sum turned out to be far less than Darg demanded, the slave master ordered Corse and Ruggles arrested for grand larceny. Corse quickly found bail, but Ruggles was jailed for two days with common criminals, even though he had not actually been charged with anything. After that incident, a caricature of the three, entitled The Disappointed Abolitionists, was published, suggesting that they were really interested in the reward and, rather than trying to free slaves, were setting up an extortion ring to prey on unwary masters.

The case remained newsworthy over the next few months. In October, a group of black citizens honored Ruggles by giving him a cane with a golden knob. Sadly, the struggle was taking its toll on the valiant Ruggles. Now only 28 years old, he was nearly blind and was afflicted with severe bowel disorders. All of his money and time went into the movement, so he often was homeless. Worse afflictions were on the way, and they came from a surprising source.

In 1837, Samuel Eli Cornish, aided by Philip A. Bell, resurrected his black newspaper and renamed it the Colored American. Ruggles quickly became a regular contributor. The editors in turn frequently wrote approvingly of his actions. But in early 1839, a terrible dispute arose that ended Ruggles’ career in New York City. Hearing rumors that a black hotelier named John Russell was hiding captive blacks before they were transported south, Ruggles, without Cornish’s knowledge, inserted an article in the Colored American accusing the innkeeper of helping kidnappers. Russell sued the newspaper, Ruggles and Cornish for libel and won a judgment of $600—which nearly bankrupted the weekly journal. Furious, Cornish attacked Ruggles in print. Although wealthy benefactors soon paid the libel award, Cornish campaigned to have Ruggles driven out of the movement. One method was to demand that Ruggles explain every cash expenditure of the Committee of Vigilance. After a careful accounting, it appeared that the committee’s funds were short $400. Broken in health and deeply hurt by Cornish’s accusations, Ruggles was forced to resign his post as secretary of the committee. Before doing so, he published his last imprint in New York City, A Plea for a Man and a Brother, in which he tried to refute Cornish’s indictments. In truth, the more conservative Cornish and his many allies had tired of Ruggles’ radical methods and sought less confrontational means to fight slavery.




from Graham Russell Hodges, Hazards of Anti-Slavery Journalism, 2000
(PLEASE SEE: http://www.davidrugglescenter.org/davidruggles.html)

We look forward to the upcoming biography of David Ruggles by Colgate Professor, Graham Russell Hodges, the working title of which is A Whole-Souled Man: David Ruggles and the Rise of Radical Black Abolitionism.