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Download the abridged Preservation Plan (as given to guests at the oral presentation)

First Avenue to the East River

14th Street from the East River to First Avenue serves as a border between the Lower East Side to the south and Stuyvesant Town to the north. The north side of the street is characterized by large-scale, post-Second World War urban renewal development, while the south side features low-scale, mid-twentieth-century commercial developments interspersed with tenements dating from the 1860s to the 1910s. The area terminates at the Consolidated Edison Company’s historic and still functioning heavy industrial facility.

Zoning Summary

The R7-2 designation is responsive to the tower-in-thepark development, and “typically produces fourteenstory buildings with low lot coverage that are set back from the street” such as Stuyvesant Town and the residential tower between Avenues B and C.

The M3-2 zoning designation allows for “heavy industries which generate noise, traffic and pollutants.” These districts are usually along the waterfront, as is this site, but are also usually buffered from residential neighborhoods, unlike this power plant.

The C1-6A designation allows small retail and personal service shops that cater to the local residential neighborhood. The maximum allowable F.A.R. for commercial uses is 2.0, which matches almost exactly the existing commercial “taxpayer” buildings. The residential equivalent zoning is R7A, which mandates a maximum F.A.R. of 4.0 and lot coverage of sixty five percent (eighty percent for corner lots). These residential structures are likely to be “bulky, six- to eight-story apartment houses that are compatible with existing buildings found in older neighborhoods.”

The zoning along this area of 14th Street is an almost perfect match with the character of the existing buildings. The current zoning offers little, if any, incentive to demolish extant structures in the area since they are already built to maximum allowable bulk. The most likely change to the area would probably be the demolition of the single- or two-story commercial “taxpayer” structures and their replacement with mixed-use or residential buildings of compatible scale with the existing tenements. Because the current zoning is so compatible with the existing character of the area, any significant alterations to the zoning should be discouraged.

Physical Conditions

The area has three major building scales: one-story commercial structures; five- to six-story tenements; and twelve-story apartment buildings. The materials are mainly brick with some terra cotta, cast-iron storefronts, and concrete. Vinyl signage dominates the streetscape of these blocks. The age of the buildings varies: the tenements are between one hundred to on hundred fifty years old, the tower-in-the-park around fifty years; and the taxpayers date from up to seventy years old. Deterioration appears in almost all the tenements in this area and some even display structural problems. Stuyvesant Town is fairly well maintained.

Historic Resources

Existing designations:
Primary resources:
Secondary resources:

Issues

Church of the Immaculate Conception

This site could potentially be threatened if the demographics of the neighborhood change as a result of the rapid development of 14th Street, thereby changing the congregation of the church. At any point, the Church could claim “economic hardship,” which would exempt the building from LPC review. Immaculate Conception is the only religious property on 14th Street that is eligible for a Sacred Sites Grant, which would provide funding for the upkeep of the church.

628-640 E14th Street (“Pelham Tenements”)

As the tenements are already built to bulk according to the current residential zoning, the biggest threat facing these buildings is their physical condition. Further deterioration and acute structural problems already evident in these buildings may lead to their condemnation—especially since renovation may not be economically viable for the owners of these rentstabilized buildings. A second major issue is the fact that the building are all under separate ownership, which will make it difficult to preserve the entire row of nine buildings as a unified entity (even today six of the nine are read separately due to different paint schemes). This may, however, help delay their demolition since it would be difficult to piece together a large enough, and therefore attractive enough, plot of land.

The most probable result of these issues will be the continued deterioration and possible demolition of these buildings due to the needed extensive renovations. Different outcomes are possible for the buildings owned by different owners.

The tenements are worthy of designation as a city and national landmark. Such a designation would makes them eligible for tax incentives and other assistance funds which may help encourage reluctant owners to maintain the physical and structural integrity of the buildings. These buildings would also benefit from a façade easement to ensure that their unique and significant appearance within the streetscape is preserved as a unified ensemble.

East River Generating Station

With deregulation, and perhaps community resistance to perceived environmental impacts, the Consolidated Edison Company might one day choose to vacate the site—leading to the obsolescence of the building and potential demolition of the historic buildings. It is important to note that this result will probably not occur in the near future since the company has invested significant resources into expanding the plant to replace the capacity lost with the closing of the 41st Street station.

Stuyvesant Town

Although Stuyvesant Town comprises a large section of the street, and is from nine to thirteen stories high, it is still considered underbuilt, and has the potential for future additions to accommodate an increase in tenant facilities and increase the revenue that the apartment complex is capable of generating. Recently, MetLife’s policy of deregulating rent-stabilized apartments to rent them on the open market has contributed to a shifting demographic of the planned community.

As a primary resource, Stuyvesant Town is being proposed for local and national landmark designation. If designation does not take place, a 197A Community Plan may be an advisable way to protect Stuyvesant Town from future development. Façade easements may also be useful for Stuyvesant Town to prevent facility updates from altering the original design of the complex.

East Side Tenements

The perceived grittiness in this area, the lack of convenient transportation, and the lack of access to the river may help lessen development pressures today. The current zoning is usually compatible with the five-stories of the exiting tenements. There is, however, still a threat that in time – due to the development of the Second Avenue subway or just further increase in Manhattan land values – the area will become more desirable, putting the fate of the tenements in jeopardy. The difficulty of upgrading the tenements to modern, highquality housing standards may also form an incentive for their demolition if the area is up-scaled. Another issue is the presence of soft sites on surrounding lots that may be redeveloped in an insensitive manner, dwarfing the tenements (an issue brought up by Community Board Six). In addition, physical deterioration may lead to demolition by neglect or for new development.

United States Post Office—Stuyvesant Branch

This site has not been designated and is perhaps one of the more threatened sites in this area because it is not built to bulk and could be very attractive to local developers. The building also lacks monumentality, as it was originally built to serve a local population. Preservation of this site could be encouraged by the proposed BID (refer to Chapter V).

Overarching Issues for the Area

Because the northernmost side of 14th Street consists of a large-scale residential unit, commercial activity is more limited in this neighborhood than on the rest of the street and shoppers are less likely to continue east of First Avenue. This poses a challenge for future development on this side of the street. There are now two commercially zoned sites on the 14th Street façade of Stuyvesant Town; one is utilized as a day care and the other is occupied as a grocery store. It is unlikely that the residents of Stuyvesant Town would support future rezoning for more commercial sites along the 14th street border because the residents would likely wish to keep the open green spaces, the garage, and the general status quo of the planned community.

The contrast between Stuyvesant Town on the north side of the street and the underdeveloped south side of the street creates a demographic divide within the same neighborhood (upper-middle class versus rent-stabilized tenants). This separation within the neighborhood results in a lack of community interaction. Sensitive design and the process of community planning could encourage appropriate redevelopment of taxpayer lots.

Summary

One of our primary preservation goals must be to encourage the maintenance and proper stewardship of the tenements along this section of 14th Street. Economic incentives – such as preservation tax breaks or façade easements – would provide motivation to landlords who might otherwise be reluctant to invest in these important historic structures. Designating the Pelham Tenements as city landmarks will also help to ensure that the most significant of these buildings remain intact and properly cared for.

The other identified significant resources are a lower priority only because their existence seems less precarious than that of the tenements. They certainly do not lack for merit, and the histories they tell compliment those of the tenements. The Church of the Immaculate Conception, for example, was built to serve the immigrant community living in the area’s tenements. The other significant resources speak of more recent events, as East River Generating Station recalls the industrial past of East 14th Street, while Stuyvesant Town and the post office represent the post-War era of redevelopment that forever changed large sections of Manhattan’s eastern edge.

None of these resources face any clear or immediate threats. The Church of the Immaculate Conception benefits from the protection granted by its designation as a city landmark. The Consolidated Edison Company has recently invested significant resources in its East River Generating Station and seems unlikely to abandon the facility any time in the near future. Stuyvesant Town remains immensely popular – and hence profitable – and is therefore also seemingly on steady footing. Designation of these later two resources as city landmarks would, however, provide the most effective protection against the unforeseeable dangers that they may face at some point in the future.

Taken as a group, these resources provide a valuable cross-section of the area’s history – dating from the first wave of residential development in the 1860s, through the industrial surge of the late nineteenth century, to the post-war urban redevelopment projects that brought the middle-class to East 14th Street. These buildings are tangible reminders of this history, and as such they should be preserved. The tools outlined in this chapter should help provide a practical means by which to accomplish this.