What it Means to Become a Landmark: The Bad

Once a building is designated as a state landmark, landmark owners must request the LPC’s permission to make permanent changes to the property. This is done to protect the landmark and ensure that the changes made to it do not diminish its historical and cultural value to the city.

Some owners of buildings see this more as a burden instead of a benefit. Once buildings become landmarks, they become very hard to alter to fit the changing needs of their residents and require constant upkeep by law to ensure that the building remains in good condition.

“You cant change anything that effects the exterior appearance of the building,” Kirking of NYPL said. “Then things like replacing windows become a hugely expensive thing.”

According to Kirking, this is an issue that effects residential and privately owned landmarks more than public landmarks such as the New York Public Library. This is because landmark owners who use the building for residential purposes don’t have as many public sources of funding as public landmarks do to make repairs or preserve the building. The burden of cost is solely on them, although aid is available for struggling landmark owners.

While the outside of the building may be a problem for some landmark owners to maintain, the inside is a different story.

“There’s just a little wrinkle in the landmark law that people aren’t normally aware of and that is that being a landmark only protects the outside of the building,” Kirking said.

For residential buildings, this may be a good thing because it allows them to grow, change and adapt on the inside, but for public buildings, like the library, it can be a bad thing, because certain architectural or historical features on the inside aren’t being preserved for the people to admire.

Kirking said that people come from around the country to view the interior and exterior of the New York Public Library Main Branch which was declared a national historic landmark in 1965.

“There are always people here that are always looking to do things that the staff aren’t here to do,” Kirking said. “They’re just here to look at the building.”

While Kirking believes that it is the New York Public Library’s duty to serve tourists, he believes that the main reason why the library functions is to help people who come in to study or research a specific subject area in depth.

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