On Saturday, when perhaps I should have been hiking, I attended an all day but exciting meeting about the future of preservation at the 7th Regiment Armory known today as the Park Ave. Armory . I had often been to the Armory for art and antique shows in recent years but I’ve never really looked at it before. The Armory is actually two buildings: a set of offices fronting on Park Avenue and a huge Drill Hall – in which the art shows are staged. Most of the meeting were in the late 19th Century rooms on the Park Ave. side and some of us got a truncated tour of a few of the rooms.

If you care about NYC’s built environment, if you are interested in the aesthetic movement, if the names Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stanford White and Candace Wheeler – Associated Artists who decorated many of the rooms give you shivers, you simply must see this building. Having deteriorated over years, the building itself is now managed by a conservancy which has been investigating and very carefully restoring a late 19th Century treasure.

The advantage of meeting in these stunning spaces was that – as my mind wandered – I could look at Tiffany glass, a Stanford White ceiling and woodwork. The short tour given by Kirsten Reoch, Senior Project Director, was just wonderful although whirlwind and partial in nature. Find out how to get on a tour yourself.

The meeting was important, in my view, because it allowed those of us whose vision of preservation as including saving old structures and more to meet, think and brainstorm. I think it’s important to save old buildings from the wrecking ball or decay. But we need to do more. How do we preserve neighborhoods, the social life in them, their smell and feel, as well as buildings? The vendors at the Red Hook Ball Fields are as under siege as the carnies at Coney, and the auto-shops in Willets Point. None are “historic” or “aesthetic” in the sense that the 7th Regiment Armory is, yet all are part of New York City’s look and feel. All are under constant threat by Mayor Bloomberg and his Lack-of-Planning Commission Amanda Burden.

In addition, many of the meeting attenders recognized the importance of finding new allies in NYC; union members, tenants, small business owners have their own preservation interests. The next few years of tight-money and depressed economy present New Yorkers with deprivation but also with opportunity to curb the domination of our city by a mayor who only serves the Finance Industry and luxury developers. About this I will write more shortly.