In Yonkers, a move to landmark a city mural

Looking to preserve and protect a prominent public mural from future redevelopment in downtown Yonkers, a group of Yonkers residents and the muralist himself are pushing city officials to grant landmark status to the massive work of outdoor art and three buildings that display it as a historic district.

The city”™s Landmarks Preservation Board in May voted to recommend the creation of a Richard Haas Mural District at 35 and 36 Main St. and 5 Riverdale Ave. The Yonkers City Council can accept or reject the board”™s recommendation.

Artist Richard Haas, a Yonkers resident who works from a studio in Manhattan, in 1997 was commissioned by the city”™s Office of Downtown Waterfront Development to create “Gateway to the Waterfront,” a three-panel, 14,000-square-foot mural depicting Yonkers history from its early Native American inhabitants through its 19th-century industrial heyday. The trompe l”™oeil panels, which incorporate architectural elements of the buildings they grace and former buildings important to the community, are frescoed onto three separately owned buildings on the northwest and southwest corners of Main Street and Riverdale Avenue.


A Yonkers resident waits for a bus in front of a Richard Haas mural panel at 36 Main St. Photo by John Golden

The City Council”™s Real Estate Committee, which will advise the full council on the landmark designation, at its June 2 meeting postponed any decision until it meets with owners of the affected properties. None attended the committee meeting.

At the center of the mural triptych and the focus of concern for landmarking advocates is 36 Main St., a vacant commercial building owned by downtown Yonkers developer Nick Sprayregen and his Rising Development Yonkers LLC. Terry Joshi, one of three residents who applied for the landmark designation and collected 450 signatures on a petition in support of the mural district, told council committee members the threat that the building and its mural panel, depicting the city”™s 17th-century history of Dutch exploration and settlement, will be demolished for a redevelopment project prompted them to act.

Rising Development, which has branded the downtown area near the Hudson River as SOYO, on its soyo.com website envisions 36 Main St. and an adjacent Sprayregen-owned building at 38 Main as Lofts on Main. The Yonkers Industrial Development Agency two years ago approved financial incentives for Rising Development for a mixed-use development that would include 15 live-work lofts and 4,000 square feet of cafÃ© and retail space on the ground floor.

In a related project, Rising Development this year is redeveloping three nearby properties on Main Street and Mill Street as live-work lofts and restaurant and retail space.

Both Rising Development”™s website and an online real estate site that lists 36 Main St. show a rendering of the redeveloped property with a restaurant and outdoor terrace and the Haas mural replaced by windows.

“The mural is more important than putting some windows in,” said Barrymore Scherer, an art and music critic for The Wall Street Journal and one of the landmarking applicants for the mural district. He called Haas”™ triptych “a great secular altarpiece to Yonkers history.

Another landmarking advocate, Susan Hoeltzel, an artist and art professor and director of the Lehman College Art Gallery, called the 78-year-old Haas “a very important part of contemporary art” and his murals “part of the contemporary art canon.”

“Our city has a major Haas mural,” Hoeltzel told the Real Estate Committee. “It”™s already in place; the hard part is done.” The Yonkers community should work to keep it here, she said.

Joshi and Scherer several years ago led a similar move to have a 19th-century commercial block on Warburton Avenue landmarked as a historic district ahead of its demolition for a workforce housing development planned by the nonprofit Greyston Foundation. The project was delayed by the City Council”™s approval of the Philipse Manor Historic District in 2008 and was redesigned by Greyston to incorporate facades and elements of the existing buildings.


The mural at 5 Riverdale Ave.

“Those Philipse Manor buildings were in much worse shape than 36 Main St. is today,” Joshi said.

“These buildings that seem to be eyesores,” said Scherer, “are really possibilities, and their possibilities have already been enhanced by Mr. Haas”™ work.”

Joshi noted Mayor Mike Spano”™s effort to build a thriving arts community in the city. “We have a mayor trying to use visual arts as an economic driver,” she said. “The Haas murals are a standard-bearer for that vision.”

At Rising Development Yonkers, director Tim Rutledge said the developer is “confident we”™ll come to a compromise” with the landmark advocates. Sprayregen and his development team have met with city planning officials and Joshi and Scherer several times in the last six months.

“Any time any building is landmarked, it”™s not ideal,”™ Rutledge said. “It makes the process longer. The process to get anything approved is more onerous and it does make the cost more expensive.”

“We hope that we don”™t have to get them (City Council) involved” and can avoid a vote on the landmark designation, Rutledge said. “We hope we can come to a compromise before we have to come before them.”

At City Hall, the Spano administration hopes for the same, although a compromise that leaves both sides feeling like winners might not be reached soon, Yonkers Planning Commissioner Wilson Kimball said.

Among the compromises discussed, she said, Rising Development could commission Haas to paint a new mural on the developer”™s nearby Mill Street courtyard project under construction this year or on another Sprayregen property and demolish 36 Main St. Kimball and Joshi both noted the owner is concerned that the wall of the building behind the Haas mural might have been damaged by water seepage.

Kimball said city officials are trying to balance an owner”™s right to “self-determination” on a property with the recognition “that Richard Haas is an internationally known muralist.”

“I think we can get a compromise without the landmark designation,” she said.

But the muralist and landmark applicants were less confident that a compromise would be reached.

“All it”™s been is six months of conversations,” Joshi said.


The mural at 35 Main St.

Haas, who painted his first mural in Soho in 1973 and has done numerous large-scale mural projects around the country, expressed his frustration with Sprayregen.

“I call it a duck and cover, duck and run,” he said. “I don”™t know the situation because the owner is so evasive in a sense.”

Haas cited the redevelopment of once-blighted downtown Fort Worth, Texas, as an example of what public art and private development together can do for a city.

Haas in 1985 was commissioned by investor and philanthropist Sid Bass to create “Homage to Chisholm Trail,” a 4,500-square-foot trompe l”™oeil depiction of an 1860s cattle drive in Fort Worth”™s downtown Sundance Square. The artist said he worked with Bass and his brothers for about 10 years as they revitalized the Texas city”™s downtown. It is now a popular regional and even national destination for visitors, he said.

Haas said most of the development initiative in downtown Yonkers has come from public officials rather than the private sector. “I think the city needs a much more assertive, aggressive, and enlightened development by private developers,” he said.