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LPC's approach to monitoring and designating religious properties as landmarks
1:26:00
ยท
3 min
Commissioner Carroll explains LPC's approach to monitoring and potentially designating religious properties as landmarks, addressing Council Member Salamanca's concerns about church closures and alterations.
- LPC conducts annual surveys of thousands of buildings to inform their planning and priorities
- The commission recognizes the unique needs and challenges faced by religious institutions, including dwindling congregations and complex maintenance requirements
- LPC applies rigorous standards when assessing the architectural and historical significance of religious properties
- The commission works carefully with religious institutions during the designation process to ensure it doesn't have a negative impact
- Recent example: designation of Holy Root Episcopal Church in Washington Heights, significant for its Latino history
Rafael Salamanca
1:26:00
And then my last question is, recently I'm seeing at least in The Bronx that the archdiocese is closing many of its private school buildings.
1:26:12
And some of these buildings are, in my opinion, would be landmark eligible or or in my opinion, they qualify to be designated as a landmark, but they have not.
1:26:27
And so what we're seeing is that they are don't know if they're selling their buildings to to charter schools who are moving in or if they're leasing their property to charter schools.
1:26:40
And in essence, when you get a charter school that comes in, the exterior of the building, they wanna change it, you know, with their aesthetics.
1:26:46
And and is LPC monitoring buildings do you have a list of buildings, especially buildings that are in the portfolio of the archdiocese that qualify for landmarks that have not been landmarked?
Sarah Carroll
1:26:59
We have I mean we do surveys every year.
1:27:02
We survey thousands of buildings, and those that survey inventory informs our planning and our priorities.
1:27:08
So we are aware of many sites, religious or not, that may merit and we think about when to prioritize certain items based on other factors.
1:27:19
And so what I would say though with religious properties is that we are, you know, we work very hard.
1:27:30
We recognize that many religious institutions have unique needs.
1:27:35
Many of them have dwindling congregations and very complex buildings that are architecturally complex that are expensive to maintain.
1:27:44
And the reality is that most of these are important to their communities or were historically.
1:27:50
And so we, I think, have to look at religious properties with real rigor and care to ensure that we are applying standards that allow us to protect the most significant buildings without causing harm to religious institutions or displacing them.
1:28:10
So it's, you know, we have very rigorous standards when we look at the architectural and historical significance.
1:28:19
But we are, you know, we have recently in the last couple of years we designated the Holy Root Episcopal Church in Washington Heights, which had very specific Latino history.
1:28:31
And so that was a very exciting designation for us.
1:28:34
But we do work very carefully to work with the religious institution as we move forward with the designation to ensure that it doesn't have a negative impact.
1:28:45
And of course we can't regulate use.
Rafael Salamanca
1:28:47
No, no I understand you cannot regulate the use, but I'm just, we're just seeing I don't wanna call it a pattern, but it seems as if there has been an influx of school closures, at least in the borough of The Bronx, and there are concerns these buildings may qualify for designation.
1:29:01
They're not, and there there is a there's a concern, to say the least.
1:29:07
Alright.
1:29:08
That, I'm gonna hand it over to chair Hanks.
1:29:10
Thank you.