Good morning. It's Wednesday. We'll look at why a museum is at odds with the city, which owns the 192-year-old rowhouse it occupies. We'll also look at a class-action lawsuit that accuses the agency responsible for investigating child abuse of using "coercive tactics" that traumatize families.
It sounds like an intramural squabble: A museum on city-owned property is at odds with a city agency and is circulating protest letters it plans to deliver to Mayor Eric Adams. The squabble troubles some preservationists, because the building the city owns and the museum occupies is a landmark rowhouse, now known as the Merchant's House Museum, that is exactly as it was in the 19th century, except for the electrical wiring. The furniture, including the "square" piano from the 1840s in the front parlor, was left in place when the last descendant of the longtime owners died in the 1930s and a relative bought the house. The house, on East Fourth Street in the East Village, was eventually deeded to the city. By then, the Landmarks Preservation Commission had designated it as both an exterior and interior landmark. Now the museum — run by a nonprofit group that has long had an operating agreement with the city — finds itself at cross purposes with the landmarks commission, which in December approved plans for a seven-story building next door. The museum director, Margaret Halsey Gardiner, said the construction work would threaten the stability of the house and could ruin one of its most important elements — the original plasterwork, which she said was irreplaceable. "All you need is a little shaking and that plaster's going to come crashing down," she said. "There's no question the building is going to be damaged. It really could collapse. Certainly the plaster's going to go."
She also questioned the timing of the approval from the landmarks commission, saying that the city, through the parks department, is planning to do $3.2 million worth of restoration work on the house, starting later this year. The landmarks commission gave its imprimatur to the developer's plans after requiring what its spokeswoman called "independent safeguards," including a "stabilization and remediation plan" for the plaster and a fund to cover plaster repairs if they were needed. The commission also called for monitoring vibration during construction, setting stricter-than-usual standards. Gardiner's concerns were echoed by Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, even as he acknowledged that the safeguards "far exceed what is typically required." "I don't have a crystal ball to be able to say whether or not that will do the job here in terms of keeping the Merchant's House safe," he said. "I will also say we've had multiple experiences with the city where precautions that were supposed to be taken never happened and buildings were damaged as a result."
The merchant who owned Merchant's House was Seabury Tredwell, who made a fortune in the hardware business and later invested in real estate and in new technology, which in his day was railroads. When he died in 1865, each of his eight children inherited $100,000, about $2 million today. An original fake doorThe house still has the formality of antebellum New York, with a vestibule where visitors presented their calling cards to a servant. Inside, the rooms have carefully measured proportions. The front parlor has a fake door, placed just so when the house was built. It is there for symmetry, balancing the real door at the other end of the wall opposite the fireplace. The developer behind the project next door, Kalodop II Park Corporation, submitted plans a dozen years ago that called for demolishing the one-story garage on that lot. The museum fought that plan, and it was voted down by the City Council after having been approved by the landmarks commission and the City Planning Commission. The current plan does not require action by the Council because it does not involve zoning waivers, as the earlier one did. Berman said that a "win-win" would have been for the city to buy the garage and "turn it into something that's compatible with this fragile building." But the parks department is not "pursuing acquisition of this lot," a spokeswoman said.
Gary Spindler, an officer of Kalodop, pointed to the safeguards the landmarks commission had called for. "Many buildings are constructed next to landmarked properties, all different ages and types," he said. "This is not anything new in New York City." He said that the next step was to draw plans and go to the Department of Buildings. Only after that, he said, would he decide "what is the best use" for the new structure — assuming the Buildings Department approves the necessary permits. Gardiner's letters say it should deny them. WEATHER Expect a partly sunny day with light winds and temperatures in the low 40s. Tonight, look for a partly cloudy sky as temperatures drop to the low 30s. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until March 24 (Purim).
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We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Child abuse investigators traumatize families, a lawsuit says
Ebony Gould, above, is a single mother with three children in Queens who has been investigated 12 times by the city agency responsible for finding and stopping child abuse. Each investigation involved several home visits. Gould, who believes the investigations were prompted by an abusive ex-partner, said she was made to feel that she had no choice but to let in the investigators from the agency, the Administration for Children's Services. She said that an A.C.S. worker had told her during one of the first visits that she was at risk of having her children taken away. "It almost felt like I was being abused again," said Gould, who was cleared each time, "but by a stranger." Gould is a plaintiff in a sweeping class-action lawsuit that argues that A.C.S. uses unconstitutional practices that traumatize the families it is charged with protecting. The lawsuit says that agency investigators bully and deceive their way into people's homes, riffle through families' belongings, strip-search children and humiliate parents. Gould and the other plaintiffs are represented by the Family Justice Law Center, an organization dedicated to preventing the unnecessary separation of families. David Shalleck-Klein, the group's executive director, said the purpose of the lawsuit was not to stop A.C.S. investigations but to focus on illegal searches. "They open refrigerators, inspect labels in medicine cabinets, tell children to lift up their shirts and pull down their pants," he said. "And it's not just a one-and-done — they frequently come back, time and time again. Marisa Kaufman, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in a statement that the agency would review the lawsuit. "A.C.S. is committed to keeping children safe and respecting parents' rights," she said. The agency investigates more than 40,000 allegations a year. Some are emergencies, and the agency has the difficult task of weighing the civil rights of families against the safety of children. But the lawsuit says that the agency "chooses to almost never seek" court orders — one of three legal justifications that investigators can use to enter homes — and conducts tens of thousands of searches every year in nonemergency circumstances, coercing consent and violating constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. METROPOLITAN DIARY Photo bomber
Dear Diary: It was the winter of 1981 or 1982. My friend Maya and I were acting as models for a friend who wanted to photograph us on the subway for a project she was working on. We got on the No. 6 at Astor Place and headed uptown. At 23rd Street, the comedian Andy Kaufman got on the train and took a seat at the other end of the car. Then, apparently noticing that my friend was taking pictures, he got up, walked into the shot, sat down again and looked directly across the car. As the train approached the next stop, 28th Street, my friend took the photograph. The train stopped, the doors opened and Andy Kaufman, without saying a word, stood up and walked out onto the platform. — Lowell Downey Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Francis Mateo and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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N.Y. Today: A fight to preserve a pristine piece of old New York
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