Proposed Park Avenue Historic District  Fall 2010

Park Avenue is one of the most significant residential streets in New York City, yet the stretch from 79th to 96th Street does not have full protection.  Historic Park Avenue has submitted a Request for Evaluation for a Park Avenue 79th to 86th Street Historic District Extension to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission on May 20, 2010.  In conjunction with this effort, Carnegie Hill Neighbors has also submitted an RFE for designation of the parts of Park Avenue from 86th to 96th Street that are not in the Carnegie Hill Historic District .

PARK AVENUE, FROM 79TH TO 96TH STREETS, IS LISTED ON THE 

STATE AND NATIONAL REGISTERS OF HISTORIC PLACES.

Significance:

Park Avenue from 79th to 96th Street is significant as a residential boulevard that is the repository of some of the finest 1910s and 1920s apartment buildings in New York City. The buildings were designed by such major apartment building architects as J.E.R. Carpenter, Emery Roth, George & Edward Blum, Rosario Candela, George F. Pelham, Schwartz & Gross, and Robert T. Lyons, among others.

Park Avenue is known globally as the premier residential street. The very name is an icon denoting fabulous residences.  Park Avenue between 79th and 96th Street is the same historically, architecturally, and culturally as the stretch of Park Avenue south of 79th Street, already within the Upper East Side Historic District.   As such, this important and significant area on the Upper East Side deserves full New York City Landmarks protection.  

Residential Park Avenue, from 59th to 96th Street, is unique in its shared history, period of development, and apartment building architecture dating from the 19-teens and 1920s.  Park Avenue is a corridor that relates to itself more than to the side streets that branch from it. 

History:

Park Avenue was laid out as Fourth Avenue in the 1811 Commissioneer's Plan.  The New York & Harlem Railroad, chartered in 1831, laid the first tracks along Fourth Avenue.  The tracks were moved to an underground tunnel by 1877;it ran from 56th to 97th Street. 

Fourth Avenue was renamed Park Avenue in 1888, but it did not become the elegant boulevard with planted malls until 1910. The trains were electrified after a major accident  in the tunnel in 1902, and the open cut was covered and planted, transforming Park Avenue. This dramatic change in landscape made it much more attractive for exclusive residential development.

The historical development of Park Avenue contributes to our understanding of nineteenth and early twentieth century urban accommodation of public transportation.   The construction of the railroad tunnel, and then the creation of the planted malls, tell the story of how cities came to deal with nineteenth century technology, from railroads to subways, from telephone poles to lighting.

The architecture on Park Avenue that is already within the Upper East Side Historic District, is equal to the architecture outside the district.  It has the same major building type, 1910's - 20’s apartment buildings, designed by the same architects and with the same level of significance, quality of workmanship, and level of integrity.

PLEASE SUPPORT LOCAL HISTORIC DISTRICT INCLUSION FOR PARK AVENUE

FROM 79TH STREET TO 96TH STREETS.

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