Friday, September 8, 2017
Vol. 93, No.51
FOUNDED 1923
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LOCALLY OWNED AND EDITED
National Night Out PAGE 42 n Antique appraisals
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Preservationists slam village concept of saving St. Paul's façade
SCHOOL'S OPEN, DRIVE CAREFULLY
BY RIKKI N. MASSAND
Commissioner Kenneth Jackson (right) and Detective Richard Pedone (left) launched AAA’s “School’s Open – Drive Carefully” campaign at the Garden City Gazebo at the Village Green. Traffic Safety Specialist Barbara Ward and local school student Kara Grimes also participated in the campaign. Garden City Police Commissioner Kenneth Jackson and Detective Richard Pedone helped AAA Northeast launch its 72nd annual “School’s Open - Drive Carefully” program at the Garden City Gazebo at the Village Green. A local school student, Kara Grimes, also helped AAA kickoff the program, which alerts drivers to be extra careful behind the wheel as children end their summer vacation and return to school. Drivers should be particu-
larly cautious in school areas, keeping their speed at or below posted limits and being prepared to stop, on both sides of the street, for school buses with flashing red lights as required by New York State law. P. F. Drury, a former safety director for the Automobile Club of Missouri, initiated the “School’s Open - Drive Carefully” campaign in the St. Louis, Missouri area in 1933. The campaign spread to other AAA clubs throughout the United States. AAA New
York State began its program in 1945. The campaign is conducted with local government and police agencies. “The help we get from police departments in our territory adds to the effectiveness of our ‘School’s Open’ campaign,” said Donna Galasso, assistant director of AAA’s Traffic Safety unit. “We appreciate the efforts of Commissioner Jackson, Detective Pedone and the Garden City Police Department, which helps to increase safety for all students.”
The decision by the Garden City Board of Trustees to place St. Paul’s as a front-and-center ‘primary task and project’ on the 20172018 Village Priorities List created a buzz in preservation circles and through social media across the country. This summer Mayor Brian Daughney explained that the village hosted a few intrigued architecture firms that could bid on it, with concept plans calling for new synthetic-turf fields and an athletics and recreation facility sitting behind the existing front façade. However a lineup of historic preservation professionals working outside the village but with extensive knowledge of St. Paul’s School connected on a more sensitive adaptive re-use of the structure, which dates to 1880s. As September begins three professionals from various walks of preservation concur; St. Paul’s could be transformed into a new housing development for adults, seniors and/or “empty-nesters,” who would not contribute students to the Garden City Public Schools population could find an ideal dwelling placed within much of the existing building’s components. They say the cost-effectiveness of any reuses and their implications for the Village of Garden City’s tax roll, if housing is considered, should be taken as top priority along with preservation. John Jay College professor, historian and preservationist Jeffrey Kroessler grew up in Garden City and he now lives in a New York City historic district of Sunnyside, Queens. It was 16 months ago that he attended a hearing on an application for 104 Sixth Street in front of the village’s Architectural Design Review Board (ADRB) in an effort to stand united with the Garden City Historical Society and save the original structure, one of the dozens listed on the National Register of Historic Places, like St. Paul’s is. Professor Kroessler spoke with The Garden City News on August 31 as he finds the plans the Village Board has indicated for St. Paul’s ‘simply appalling.’ “What is in the water in Garden City? Those people don’t think they have to listen to anyone who may actually know something more than they do and have information he (Mayor Daughney) doesn’t already have and doesn’t want to hear,” he said. Kroessler believes there would be no shortage of bidders to go along with the Board of Trustees stated intention. “There are a lot of architects out there who would jump at the chance to do that project. The idea that the front façade can be saved without the rest of it is just nonsense – and far more, much more expensive than retrofitting St. Paul’s building on the inside,” the professor said. See page 24
Garden City Trojans football season begins Saturday PAGE 54 Service of prayer and remembrance at GCCC PAGE 3