Concerned that a developer is allowing three long- deteriorating Crown Street gems to die through neglect, preservationists plan to rally downtown Friday and petition the city to step in.
The rally is scheduled for noon outside 30 – 36 Crown St., one of the three buildings all on the same pocket of an otherwise reviving Ninth Square historic district. A petition drive will be launched at the event.
“Three historic buildings on Crown Street, in the heart of New Haven’s Ninth Square National Register District are open to the weather, and have recently been subject to extensive internal demolition,” organizers declared on this web site, which detailed their concerns. “This demolition has been done in the absence of plans for the use and renovation of the buildings. These buildings are important public resources, are irreplaceable, and must be saved for future generations.
In 1966, when this photo was taken, the south side of Crown between State and Orange was a thriving commercial strip. It has come alive again, with a jazz club and recording studio (Firehouse 12), cafe nine, new restaurants and apartments, the Artspace gallery. But the three buildings have lain vacant for decades now. As the Ninth Square redevelopment project has revitalized the broader neighborhood, these buildings have been left to slowly fall apart.
Anstress Farwell, president of the Urban Design League, and John Herzan, the Preservation Services Officer of the New Haven Preservation Trust, are teaming up with area architects and business owners to try to save these buildings, which the city has promised to preserve, from the fate of demolition by neglect.
The buildings lie within the Ninth Square historic district, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The historic district, roughly bounded by Church, State, George, and Court streets, received its designation in May, 1984. In an inventory report included in the district’s designation on the National Register, all three Crown Street buildings are listed as contributing to the significance of the historic district.
The property closest to State Street, 26 – 28 Crown, and its immediate neighbor 30 – 36 Crown, are both commercial-style buildings dating to 1895. The former is notable for the decorative lintels above the windows, while the latter has three distinctive bands of glass windows very unusual for the period. Closest to the lot across from Miso is the 1910 S.Z. Field building, in the neo-classical revival style .
All were sold to private developer David Nyberg in 2004, along with the parking lot at the corner of Crown and State and the lot on Crown between Cafe Nine and Acme Furniture.
Since Nyberg took over Phase II of the Ninth Square Project from developer McCormack Baron Salazar, intermittent work has been done in fits and starts, including new roofing on the back of 26 – 28 Crown, asbestos abatement, and gutting of upper level floors at the S.Z. Field building.
But there have been no comprehensive steps towards rehabilitation, and construction crews haven’t been on the site for many months, preservations said. Farwell said she is concerned that the internal work may end up being detrimental to the goal of preservation.
“They’ll put in a crew, and they’ll hammer away for a while, and then disappear for six months,” said Alan Greenberg, owner of Acme furniture, which sits directly across Crown Street from the historic buildings. He has been in the store since 1966; he has watched the buildings deteriorate since the late 1970s. “The condition of the buildings is deplorable, to put it mildly,” he said.
During the Ninth Square redevelopment project’s early stages, the city received millions in state funding (on top of far more in federal money). In return it made an agreement with the state to preservef the many historic buildings within the district.
“There’s an understanding with the state preservation officer going back into the ’80s that everything possible would be done to rehabilitate and preserve these buildings as long as it was economically feasible,” said Karyn Gilvarg, the city’s City Plan director.
Gilvarg said that as far as she knows, College St. LLC, Nyberg’s company, has all the approvals it needs to begin rehabilitation work. But the buildings still stand slowly crumbling, exposed to the elements and, many fear, nearing the point of structural instability that would require them to be torn down.
“We worked with him as best we could to expedite all of those and make sure he got all the approvals he needed,” she said. “I don’t understand why development hasn’t moved more quickly.”
According to Andy Rizzo, head of City Hall’s Livable City’s Initiative, Nyberg has hired an engineer to do a structural evaluation of the buildings. In February, Rizzo was at the site with the engineer and a representative of Nyberg. But he is still waiting on the report and has not received any information about the developers plans for the buildings.
Once Rizzo receives the engineer’s report, he said he will evaluate whether the buildings need to come down for reasons of structural instability.
New Haven Deputy Director of Economic Development Tony Bialecki said that as of a meeting last week, Nyberg said he is planning on proceeding. “The claim is that he’s going to work on it,” he said. Delays in the project may have been do to a change of plans from condominiums to apartments, due to the state of the economy, Bialecki added. “There’s definitely a concern that if it stays in that situation for a while it could become further deteriorated,” he said.
Nyberg is working with the Garvin Design Group, an architectural firm from South Carolina. The firm’s website shows plans for the construction of new buildings where the parking lots now stand, but no plans for what will be done with the existing buildings. Nyberg could not be reached for comment.
“The worst thing a building can be is unoccupied; that makes it more vulnerable to vandalism and the elements,” said Herzan. “These buildings are very, very significant and we’re not happy that they’re being neglected. The people responsible for them — private owners and the city — should know that the preservation community in New Haven is troubled by their neglect.”
Gilvarg said that this group is not the only one with an interest in the story behind the deterioration of these historic buildings. “Lots of developers are interested in New Haven, and many people come in and say, ‘What about these buildings on lower Crown?’” She said she tells them the buildings are owned privately, and that the owner has plans to rehabilitate them. “They’ve certainly caught the attention of other folks.”
What makes these decrepit buildings "gems " instead of ripe for demolition?
They looked like dumps 50 years ago.