Landmarks Preservation Commission October 29, 2013, Designation List 469 LP-2490 TAMMANY HALL, 100 East 17th Street, (aka 100-102 East 17th Street, 44-48 Union Square, 44-48 Union Square East), Borough of Manhattan. Built 1928-29; architects Thompson, Holmes & Converse and Charles B. Meyers Landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 872, Lot 78 On June 25, 2013, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a Landmark of Tammany Hall and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site (Item No. 1). The hearing was advertised in accordance with the provisions of law. There were 17 speakers in favor of designation including representatives of Councilmember Rosie Mendez, State Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, State Senator Liz Kreuger, Manhattan Community Board Five Landmarks Committee Chair Howard Mendez, former City Councilmember Carol Greitzer, representatives of the Union Square Community Coalition, the Gramercy Neighborhood Association, the New York Landmarks Conservancy, the Historic Districts Council, and the National Democratic Club. A representative of the owner indicated that the owner was “not opposing the designation and looked forward to continuing the relationship with the LPC.”There were was no testimony in opposition to the designation. The Commission has received a statement in support of the designation form Assemblymember Deborah Glick. It has also received two letters in support of the designation, including one from the Samuel J. Tilden Democratic Club. Summary Built in 1928-29 to the designs of Thompson, Holmes & Converse and Charles B. Meyers, this handsome neo-Georgian building is the only surviving headquarters building of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party machine that dominated New York City politics in 19th and early-20th centuries. The building replaced Tammany’s old headquarters on 14th Street and was both a reminder of the Society’s origins in the Federalist period and a symbol of the reform-minded “New Tammany” organization that emerged in the late 1910s and 1920s. When the building was commissioned, the Tammany Society was at the height of its political fortunes and popularity – Robert F. Wagner was beginning his distinguished career in the U.S. Senate, Alfred E. Smith was a popular and widely respected governor and the leading contender for the Democratic candidacy for president, and Jimmy Walker was an extraordinarily popular Mayor. Within a few years of the building’s completion, revelations of municipal corruption led to Walker’s resignation and a split in the Democratic Party with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other reformers distancing themselves from Tammany and ensuring the election of Fiorello LaGuardia as mayor. Starved for patronage during the LaGuardia administration, in 1943 the Tammany organization sold the building to Local 91 of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the main meeting hall became one of the most important centers for union activities in New York City. Since the mid- 1980s the building’s large auditorium has been home to Off-Broadway theater, housing the Roundabout Company until 1991 and a number of distinguished independent productions since then. The remainder of the building has been occupied by the New York Film Institute since 1994. Praised by the Real Estate Record for its “dignified architectural treatment, one of the chief motifs of which are the severe Colonial columns in the centers of the Union Square and Seventeenth-street facades which recall the days of early American architecture,” the building’s design draws inspiration from the original Federal Hall, where George Washington took the oath

of office as the first president and employs specially molded bricks modeled after the bricks used by Democratic Party founder Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. It features a rusticated stone base, pedimented portico, and double-height pilasters, sculptural reliefs in limestone and terra cotta, and

… (truncated, full text in PDF)