Landmarks Commission Moves to Designate Beach House

By Oliver Lukacs

March 13 -- The Landmarks Commission this week halted a wrecking ball aimed at a piece of architecture "that speaks of a whole era," indicating the vacant wooden beach house in Ocean Park has all the earmarks of a historic landmark.

While postponing a vote until its next meeting, the commission Monday night unanimously agreed the two-story frame house at 128 Hollister Avenue -- wrapped by a row of windows and surrounded by a white picket fence -- should be preserved.

"It speaks of a whole era," said Commission Chair Ruthann Lehrer, who is an architectural historian.

The commission -- which has 60 days to make a decision -- asked staff for more information.

"We only had old information from staff," Commissioner Roger Genser said after the meeting. "I think we just need more information to make a decision on this one."

Word of the house's pending demolition prompted four panicked phone calls from neighbors -- "they're going to tear down the house on Hollister" -- and letters and emails -- "please-save the house" -- to the commissioners, most of whom seemed to have developed a small obsession with the turn-of-the-century structure.

Even though she "probably shouldn't have," Commissioner Nina Fresco admitted to "snooping in the back yard" of the house out of admiration during one of her numerous visits to the site. Genser said he also visited the home multiple times, as had almost every member on the dais.

After noting how the "altered American foursquare" house, sitting prominently a block from the beach, complements its beachside context, Commissioner Robert Posek said, "I would not want to let this go this evening" without safeguarding it from demolition with a landmark designation.

At Genser's behest, the commission decided to designate the house individually, instead of attaching its block to a potential district of beach homes being currently considered in Ocean Park, which has the largest concentration of houses designated as potential landmarks on the commission's inventory.

Genser noted that adjacent streets have 10 to 20 houses registered in the inventory per block -- making the surrounding area a more reasonable historic district nominee. But he noted that the number of historic houses "peter out" to only two on Hollister.

Fresco agreed. "Hollister is too eroded as a street to be in the district," she said, adding that condominium townhouses are about to be erected across the street from the beach home, further adding to the "erosion" caused by other modern buildings lining the block.

Hitting an optimistic note, Fresco added that the preserved beach home sitting among the modern structures is "an opportunity to tell a continued story. The block can continue to grow, to move ahead and keep a vestige of the past."

Lehrer agreed, saying that the house could act "as the northern boundary of a beach-track district."

The site's cultural value, said Commissioner Barbara Kaplan, goes beyond the architecture.