Community Board Supports Inwood Historic District: Report

INWOOD, NY — The local community board representing Uptown Manhattan voted in favor of a proposed historic district in Inwood, which could be designated this week, according to reports.

Community Board 12 passed a resolution urging the city Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the proposed Park Terrace West-West 217th Street Historic District during its full board meeting in early December, New York 1 first reported. The board's resolution regarding the controversial city plan to rezone Inwood called for more landmarks in Inwood based on both historic and cultural importance.

The proposed historic district will 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 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 city Landmarks Preservation Commission will vote on the proposed district on Tuesday.

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.

A message for CB 12's chair was not immediately returned. Patch will update this article if we hear back.

Photo courtesy New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission