Joint Letter in Opposition to Demolition of Tony Dapolito Rec Center
On February 14, the League joined colleagues at the New York Landmarks Conservancy, Village Preservation, Save Harlem Now!, and Landmark West! in a joint letter to NYC Mayor Eric Adams, NYC Department of Parks and Recreation Commissioner Sue Donoghue, NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission Chair Sarah Carroll, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, City Councilmember Erik Bottcher, and Manhattan Community Board 2 Chair Susan Kent, to express our strong opposition to the proposed demolition of the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center. The body of the letter is below. Click here for a PDF of the signed letter.
Re: Potential demolition of the historic Tony Dapolito Recreation Center (1 Clarkson Street, Manhattan), as presented to Manhattan Community Board 2 on February 5, 2025
Dear Mayor Adams, Commissioner Donoghue, Chair Carroll, Borough President Levine, Councilmember Bottcher, and Chair Kent:
We write in strong opposition to the proposed demolition of the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center, as presented by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation at the February 5, 2025, joint meeting of the Community Board 2 Parks & Waterfront and Landmarks Committees. The proposal to demolish this historic, city-owned, landmarked building is unnecessary, harmful to the neighborhood, environmentally unsound, and would set a dangerous precedent.
The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation has not provided any information that would justify or necessitate the complete demolition of this historic building. Their primary argument, that the building was constructed in three phases and thus cannot be adequately repaired, is spurious and runs counter to evidence and experience with buildings that have been restored under similar circumstances throughout our city.
As historic preservation advocates, each of our organizations reviews numerous proposals undergoing review at the Landmarks Preservation Commission every month. The vast majority of these projects involve buildings at least as old as the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center, many of which were also constructed in phases initially, or have had new additions introduced over time. These buildings are often coming forward for new structural work, such as the introduction of rear yard and rooftop additions, and sometimes for extensive gut renovations of their interiors. None of them are beyond repair or adaptation. Our historic buildings can be renovated, restored, and preserved.
The Tony Dapolito Recreation Center should likewise be repaired, restored, and modified as needed to suit a modern purpose. Its three street-facing facades, where most original materials and Colonial Revival-style architectural features remain, including the red brick and limestone details at the exterior (and the original Guastavino tile-arch system throughout the interior), should be retained during future renovations to the extent feasible. With this in mind, the building can be repurposed to fit a whole range of potential new uses. Many creative solutions are plausible here.
However, the Parks Department’s claim that they will “honor history and preserve historic elements where possible” is vague and entirely insufficient for a contributing building to a historic district. It offers no commitment, and implies perhaps embedding disembodied fragments of the existing building into a new one. This is an unacceptable solution.
Our city contains a great many buildings that are older than the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center, built in as many or more sections over time, and subsequently altered and used for different purposes while their historic materiality has been retained, and often even substantially restored. Just a few prominent examples located near the Center include the Jefferson Market Library (built in 1874-77 as a courthouse, significantly altered in 1967), Westbeth (built c. 1860 as the Bell Telephone Laboratories Complex, altered in 1896-1903, 1924-26, 1929, 1931-34, and 1968-70), and the Astor Library (built in three phases between 1849-53, 1856-59, and 1879-81, and saved from demolition and adapted for use as an immigrant processing center and then as a theater), among many other cases. The city has an opportunity to now similarly preserve this original turn-of-the-century bath house, which was transformed into a recreational center in 1938, and further adapt it to serve as a modern community facility.
The Parks Department has also indicated that the wall of the recreation center’s cellar vault is approximately five feet away from a subway tunnel, citing this as a barrier to preservation of the building. But countless extant 19th and early 20th century buildings throughout New York City are impacted by subway tunnels in this way, including in historic districts such as the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District, where many of the sizable commercial buildings feature underground vaults adjacent to subway routes.
Regarding Parks’ argument that the Guastavino tile system at the recreation center’s interior is too fragile, it should be noted that Grand Central Station, the Queensboro Bridge, and Manhattan’s Municipal Building (which for most of its 110 year lifetime has had heavily trafficked Chambers Street running directly underneath the building), are just three examples of high-traffic historic structures that also utilize a Guastavino tile system, and have experienced significantly greater structural stress than the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center, yet remain intact and fully functional.
To allow for the demolition of the landmarked Tony Dapolito Recreation Center would set a troubling and deeply problematic example. The Tony Dapolito Recreation Center has been under the ownership of the City of New York since it opened as a bath house in 1908. The onus has always been on the city to keep the building in good repair, but instead, the city has let it decay and continue to deteriorate for the past five years since its initial closure, not to mention in the decades prior. These years of neglect, deferred maintenance, and delayed action by the city should not be rewarded with permission to demolish the building. The Tony Dapolito Recreation Center must be preserved and reopened to serve the community, as it always has.
We also strongly urge that the Parks Department’s spoken commitment to retain this space for only parks and recreation use be made in writing and binding so that this commitment does not change as others like it have. And we urge the Community Board and elected officials to remain vigilant about the maintenance of this commitment, as we will, since its fulfillment is far from guaranteed.
Sincerely,
Jay DiLorenzo, President, Preservation League of NYS
Peg Breen, President, The New York Landmarks Conservancy
Andrew Berman, Exec. Dir., Village Preservation
Claudette Brady, Exec. Dir., Save Harlem Now!
Sean Khorsandi, Exec. Dir., Landmark West!