Dapolito Demo Plans Threaten Landmark Protections

By Andrew Berman

More than 60 years ago, NYC passed its landmarks law to ensure our city’s architecturally and historically significant buildings would be preserved. A large chunk of Greenwich Village is protected this way. It is the reason everything from the iconic Jefferson Market Library to the early 19th century rowhouses lining dozens of neighborhood streets survive. But if the NYC Parks Department gets its way, those protections will soon be rendered almost meaningless.

For more than two years, the Parks Department has been pursuing demolition of the landmarked Tony Dapolito Recreation Center at Carmine Street and Seventh Avenue South. Built in 1908 as a public bathhouse, sections were added in the 1920s and 30s under Mayor LaGuardia to provide accessible recreational facilities to the public. It admirably did so for over a century, attracting a broad cross-section of New Yorkers. Closed since 2020, its chances of a long-promised rebirth may soon end, despite a campaign promise by Mayor Mamdani to bring it back to life.

The Parks Department’s long-running argument for demolition has been that the center is too deteriorated and outdated for renovation to be feasible. Given how many older, more compromised and more complicated buildings have been rescued and restored, this argument was never convincing on its face. But earlier this year, a Freedom of Information request revealed the Parks Department was lying. Their own experts had found the building was completely fixable and had even drawn up plans to do so. Ultimately, the leadership of the city agency just didn’t want to do it.

With this information exposed, and a new mayor who promised to repair the building, we expected that at an August meeting about the fate of the center ─ with Mayor Mamdani’s newly-appointed parks commissioner ─ we’d hear plans for renovation and reopening. Instead, despite every elected official representing the area ─ along with Community Board 2 ─ supporting preservation, the parks commissioner indicated they were moving full steam ahead with demolition plans. They were even planning to use over $100 million that had been allocated for the center’s renovation for demolition and other building plans in the area. With the claim that the building was beyond repair no longer defensible, the commissioner was at least somewhat more honest — she said it was simply “more efficient” to demolish the center and start completely over with a new one in the base of a planned 400 ft. tall tower across the street at 388 Hudson Street. The completion date is TBD, but clearly many years off.

When asked why the Parks Department wasn’t planning to repair and reopen the beloved landmarked center with recreational facilities as the community and its representatives have long called for — and simply locating additional and expanded recreational facilities in the new building across the street ─ the commissioner merely indicated that demolition was more convenient.

If this plan moves ahead, it will not only mean the loss of a beloved space with deep roots in the community. It will mean gutting the very rules that keep our neighborhood and so many historic places in our city intact.

Landmarked buildings such as the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center are only supposed to be demolished if they are infeasible to maintain or if the owner can’t afford to do so. The money has already been allocated to repair the building and local elected officials have said they would work to ensure any additional funds needed are provided. Parks Department documents show the building can be repaired. Lowering the bar for demolition from financial or physical infeasibility to simply what’s more convenient or purportedly more efficient puts any landmarked building at risk. Who wouldn’t be able to argue that it might be more efficient, or convenient, to just knock down the old structure and start anew, rather than make repairs? Ironically, that’s exactly the argument that was made for the demolition of Penn Station, the destruction of which is now universally recognized as a horrible mistake that spurred the passage of the very landmarks law which this action would then undermine.

How would this happen? The ultimate decision to allow demolition would fall to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), a sister NYC governmental agency to the Parks Department, both of which fall under the control of the mayor. If the Parks Department moves ahead with its demolition plans, it means they’ve gotten buy-in from City Hall and LPC approval is all but guaranteed.

The implications couldn’t be broader. Local city-owned landmarks like Washington Square Arch and Jefferson Market Library, which enjoy the exact same protections as Dapolito, and which have required extensive and complex repairs and renovations over the years, could be subject to the exact same argument that demolition is more efficient than preservation. And that’s to say nothing of the literally thousands of privately-owned buildings, in Greenwich Village and around the city, that it could just as easily be argued are more efficient to destroy than repair.

While reflective of a troubling state of affairs in our city, this plan is far from a fait accompli. Go to villagepreservation.org/dapolito to find out the latest and how to help, including sending messages to the mayor and parks commissioner demanding campaign promises are kept and the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center is restored.