Trump's Predecessor: Sol Goldman

This historic home is being destoyed via "demolition by neglect" by the property owner, Sol Golman's estate. I walk past this home everyday, and it's even more a tragedy because it's intentional. It's like walking to work and seeing a kid beaten up every day by bullies. You have to step in and stop it. In this case, the preservationists finally took that step, for the good of all of us.





December 28, 2004

Court Steps in to Try to Save a City Landmark on the Brink
By DAVID W. DUNLAP


If there is a three-dimensional, bricks-and-mortar definition of forlorn, it is the abandoned Samuel Tredwell Skidmore House, which has stood at 37 East Fourth Street since 1845 - ever more tenuously in recent years.

On the verge of catastrophic deterioration, the three-and-a-half-story Greek Revival-style house may have been saved by a ruling last week in which a State Supreme Court justice said that the owner must restore it to a state of "good repair." And keep it that way.

The Skidmore House is an official city landmark. But a very active imagination is needed to conjure the days when Skidmore, a prominent businessman and lay leader of Trinity Church, would have been greeted at the two great Ionic columns flanking the front door by his wife, Angelina, their eight children and a nurse, Mary Ann Banks, who proudly claimed to have shook hands with George Washington.

Though the columns are still there, the eye is more likely to fall first on the boarded-up windows, the crumbling brownstone, the cracking brickwork and the "R.O." warning - Roof Open - that has been painted on the facade at the second floor, below an X-filled square that tells firefighters that there are hazardous conditions inside.

This sorry state is no accident, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has charged, but rather a result of deliberate "demolition by neglect" by the owner, identified as the estate of Sol Goldman.

Mr. Goldman, once the largest private landlord in New York City, died in 1987, leaving behind a real estate empire.

"We tried for years to get them to do the right thing by this building, but the owners refused," the commission chairman, Robert B. Tierney, said in a statement. "After it became clear to us that they had no intention of taking care of this historically significant building, we sued."

On Dec. 20, the commission won a ruling from Justice Walter B. Tolub of State Supreme Court, who ordered the owner to "permanently repair and restore the exterior of the Skidmore House to a state of 'good repair.' "

Owners of individual landmarks or properties in historic districts have long been required by law to maintain building elements in "good repair" against deterioration, decay or damage. But city officials said the Skidmore House case was the first in which the landmarks commission sued to compel compliance.

"This isn't creating new law," said Paula Van Meter, senior counsel in the administrative law division of the Law Department, who represented the landmarks commission in the case. "It's simply enforcement of the law in a formally litigated context."

"We're not looking for more litigation on these matters," she said. "We're hoping the success of this litigation will encourage owners to work cooperatively with us."

To the extent that the case sets a precedent, John Weiss, the deputy counsel to the landmarks commission, said it would apply to owners who "irresponsibly neglect a landmark so it falls into disrepair and then don't voluntarily repair the building," despite efforts by the commission to work with them.

"Of course, we're not going to be litigating against people who don't paint their shutters," he said.

It is unclear whether the Goldman estate will appeal the decision. Telephone and e-mail messages left last week for David Rosenberg, identified by the city as a lawyer for the owner, were not answered. His office said yesterday that he would be away until the new year.

The owner contended that it had fulfilled an obligation to maintain the building in the state of repair that existed at the time of its landmark designation in 1970. But Justice Tolub disagreed. "The evidence is clear," he wrote in his decision, "that defendants have allowed the facade of the Skidmore House to deteriorate."

Justice Tolub noted that as early as 1995, an inspection of the exterior disclosed that the building was open to the elements. In 2002, the roof collapsed. It was repaired about a year ago, Mr. Weiss said, and new rafters, joists and plywood floor planks were also installed.

In the longer term, the Atlantic Development Group has leased the Skidmore House and an adjacent property at the corner of the Bowery from the Goldman estate. It plans to restore the landmark as part of a larger project.

What makes the decay of the Skidmore House so striking is the existence just 75 feet away, at 29 East Fourth Street, of the Merchant's House Museum, an exquisitely maintained landmark that was built in 1832 and occupied three years later by Seabury Tredwell, Skidmore's cousin once removed, and his large family.

Margaret Halsey Gardiner, the executive director of the Merchant's House Museum, says she has watched despairingly as the neighboring Skidmore House fell apart. Occasionally, she got inside.

In the early 1990's, she said, the house was still "manageably reparable" and possessed a remarkable number of 19th-century features: shutters, doorjambs, doorknobs, floorboards, a stairway balustrade with newel post and a lantern in the front hall.

With each passing year and each fire and each wall collapse, she said, more of these elements vanished, some carted off by workers, some appropriated by neighbors.

The heartbreaking final straw, Ms. Gardiner said, was the disappearance five or six months ago of the original bell pull at the front door. It still said "Skidmore," 123 years after Samuel Tredwell Skidmore died in that house.

" 'Skidmore,' " she marveled. " 'Skidmore!' There it was.

"I should have stolen it myself."