Row Of Inwood Homes May Be On Way To Landmark Status

INWOOD, NY — The city Landmarks Preservation Commission launched a process that may lead to the landmarking of fifteen early 20th-century Tudor Revival and Colonial Revival style homes in Inwood.

The city commission calendared the designation of the Park Terrace West-West 217th Street Historic District during its Tuesday public meeting. A date for a public hearing, where supporters and opponents of the historic district designation can present testimony, has not yet been scheduled, an LPC spokesperson said.

The proposed historic district would incorporate fifteen homes on West 217th Street and Park Terrace West that were built between 1920 and 1935, according to the city Landmarks Preservation Commission. The

"The proposed historic district’s appealing historic character, significance, and sense of place is derived from its uniform scale, consistency of architectural styles and building materials, and landscaped gardens that work with the unique topography of this part of Inwood," reads a commission report on the district.

The homes were designed by architects Moore & Landsiedel, Benjamin Driesler, Louis Kurtz, C. G. de Neergaard and A. H. Zacharius, according to a commission report. Most of the homes are two-story red-brick buildings designed in the Tudor Revival and Colonial Revival styles and many feature front yards.

The homes are a far cry from the rest of the urban neighborhood and Manhattan as a whole. The proposed Park Terrace West-West 217th Street Historic District developed much later than the rest of Inwood — which was booming following the extension of subway lines uptown in 1906 and the 1920s — and have a suburban character more often found in the outer boroughs, according to an LPC report.

The Historic Districts Council is pleased with the city's decision to calendar the historic district for landmarking, its executive director Simeon Bankoff told Patch in a statement. The council had previously advocated for at least four of the homes to be landmarked.

Bankoff added that the Historic Districts Council feels that — despite consideration of the historic district — the LPC "did not go far enough in acting to protect the historic resources of the Inwood area," including the neighborhood's many religious buildings and examples of the Art Deco style of architecture.

Photo courtesy New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission