Save the Façade, Sag Harbor Architectural Board Chair Tells the Yacht Club

The Sag Harbor Yacht Club’s bid for permission to tear down most, if not all, of the ramshackle house it owns at 42 Bay Street and rebuild it as a new meeting space for its affiliated Maycroft Club went through a certain shift before the village’s Historic Preservation and Architectural Review Board on October 27.

In a matter of minutes, the club’s attorney and architect adjusted course as they seemed to accept HPARB Chair Steven Williams’s argument that the club could preserve the modest two-window façade of the 1930s cottage at the core of the structure and incorporate it in the future Maycroft Club project.

Williams urged the club’s architect, Lee Skolnick, and attorney, Dennis Downes, to think of the Helmsley Hotel in New York, the façade of which he said had been preserved while an entirely new 30-story building was put up behind it. “Let’s use that as a marker,” said Williams, who said he has construction experience in historic renovation in New York, including the lobby of a 1917 theater designed by Thomas W. Lamb.

The board made no decision on the application, tabling it for a required public hearing. No date was set, although Downes said it probably would be during the board’s December 22 meeting.

With its multiple additions and modifications, the club’s structure at the corner of Bay and Burke streets is within the Sag Harbor Historic District and was listed in the district’s 1994 original nominating inventory as a “contributing structure” because its age was greater than 50 years. Federal rules for national historic districts require that review boards prioritize the preservation of historic structures, Williams noted.

Downes had started off the club’s presentation arguing that building has “no historic significance other than it was built in the 1930s” and said, “What we would like to do is demo as much of the building as possible” because it was too poorly built and is too worn out to salvage.

Skolnick, who recently transformed the historic 1840s Methodist Church on Madison Street into The Church arts center for Eric Fischl and April Gornik, is himself a previous owner of the club’s property who designed additions for the owner that came after him, Downes said.

Skolnick described the house he created for artist Susan Rothenberg in the 1980s as “a charming play on a waterfront industrial building,” which later “had a lot of changes made to it, mostly for the worst.” He said he had found “a lot of the original construction” to have been inferior and that it needed to be replaced “to meet any codes, particularly energy codes.”

“We’re asking to demolish portions” of the structure “but we’re not looking to change the character of the 1980s design,” Skolnick said.

“Why not demolish the whole thing?” asked board member Judith Long.

Skolnick acknowledged that “maybe the entire structure” needed to come down.

Questioned by Williams, Skolnick said the original 1930s portion of the house is “in the worst shape” of all the sections of the house while a two-story addition in the rear and a studio addition at the side could be salvaged. As for the older section, “It’s not salvageable at all,” Skolnick said.

But that’s the portion of the structure the board is charged with protecting, Williams said. “That’s our focus,” he added.

“What is the distinguishing factor” about it, Skolnick asked.

“It’s in the register,” Williams said, referring to the 1994 historic district inventory of contributing structures.

Then came the apparent shift. “The original house,” said Downes, seeming to pivot after an exchange between Williams and Skolnick about whether the board really wanted to “promulgate” the original asbestos siding on the old section, “was a door and two windows and that’s still in existence and we’re going to keep that.”

He said the club would lift up that section and put “a correct foundation” under it and install an elevator to a second-floor meeting room.

Even though Downes soon reiterated the club would “save the façade” if it got permission to “bulldoze” the rest, Williams still seemed frustrated, telling him, “I don’t understand the big deal” with saving that small section of the structure.

Skolnick agreed “we can preserve in place the façade” and build behind it, which he said he had done with “1840s townhouses in Greenwich Village.”

“You’re not going to know the difference when we’re done,” Downes said.

Despite sounding like an agreement, Williams told the two, “I’m just saying to you I’m trying to be cooperative and understanding and you’re just asking for a little too much.” He added, “it’s not going to cost you” a lot more than the “couple of million” the whole project will cost to save the façade.

Before the vote to table the application for a future hearing, board member Megan Toy commented that she also favored maintaining the façade.