Elected Officials, Preservationists, and Disability Advocates Rally to Landmark Endangered New York Eye and Ear Infirmary
We were joined yesterday by NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, City Councilmember Christopher Marte, leading disability rights organizations, doctors, staff, patients, and alumni of NYEEI, fellow preservation organizations, and scores of neighbors for a rally and press conference calling on the city to finally move ahead with landmark designation of the East Village’s endangered historic New York Eye and Ear Infirmary at 13th Street and Second Avenue. Watch the video here, see photos here, and read the press release here.
For two-and-a-half years, we have been calling for this architecturally significant and endangered historic site to become NYC’s first landmark honoring disability history and the disabled community. The NYEEI has played a unique role in both disability history and Black history, and deserves to be recognized and preserved. Various reorganization, consolidation, and closure plans by Mount Sinai have left the future of the once-independent hospital in doubt.
While the Landmarks Preservation Commission has said in response to our campaign that the site “may merit consideration as an individual landmark” — an unusual and hopeful admission by the LPC — they have so far refused to take any action to landmark it. And as our recent report has shown, the Commission has also considered increasingly fewer sites for landmark designation in recent years, and eschewed consideration of endangered sites for those which face no immediate, foreseeable, or even possible threat. And in spite of the Commission’s claim to follow an “Equity Framework” ensuring a diversity of landmark designations representing all New Yorkers, not a single site in NYC has been designated specifically recognized disability history or the disabled community.
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