No landmark status for Janta House, city decides
/
The Landmarks and Preservation Commission decided the Janta House, in Elmhurst, does not rise to landmark status despite community support last week. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
Despite a last minute push from community activists and lawmakers to urge the city to landmark and protect an Elmhurst home from demolition, the Landmark Preservation Commission announced it would not move forward with the landmarking process last week.
In a letter to a one of the community members who first requested in 2020 the home be considered for landmarking, the LPC said that while they consider Walentyna and Aleksander Janta-Połczyńska to be historical figures, the Elmhurst home they lived in wasn’t where they made their most significant contributions to history. As such, it won’t be designated for landmarking and the developers who own it can move forward with the demolition process they started earlier this year.
“Our research indicates that their significant contributions occurred before they moved to this house; and while they were important within their community, had a rare book business and welcomed many notable people to their house, this does not rise to the level of significance necessary for consideration as a landmark,” wrote Kate Lemos McHale, the director of research with the LPC.
James McMenamin of the Elmhurst History & Cemeteries Preservation Society, Queens Community Board 4 Chairperson Marialena Giampino and Jennifer Ochoa, a lifelong Elmhurst resident, first wrote to the LPC in 2020 in the hopes that the commission would consider the Janta-Połczyńska’s home for landmarking.
The trio was joined by a number of local elected officials and neighbors, as well as Polish dignitaries who wrote the LPC in support of honoring the Janta-Połczyńska’s home.
The Polish American couple that lived there for decades had opened their door to artists, scholars and civic leaders who had come to New York after escaping the post-World War II Iron Curtain.
Walentyna Janta-Połczyńska served as a secretary to Poland’s prime minister during World War II, helping to translate key reports into English that revealed conditions inside Nazi-occupied Poland and exposed the Holocaust to the rest of the world. Her husband, Aleksander, was a poet, writer and journalist who escaped Nazi imprisonment before meeting his wife in Buffalo and moving to Elmhurst.
Walentyna Janta-Połczyńska. Photo via LPC recommendation
The couple purchased the home in the late 1950s, which itself had been built at the turn of the 20th Century, only undergoing one recorded renovation in its over 120 year existence. Prior to her death in 2020, Walentyna Janta-Połczyńska sold the home to an opaque limited liability company called 88-28 43rd Ave LLC, named after the address of the home.
In late March, the developer that owns the house began circulating literature to a number of the home’s neighbors, notifying them that they’d begin demolition of the building in the coming days.
At the time the literature was distributed, the developer had yet to file demolition paperwork with the Department of Buildings. That remains true as of Friday, April 1. However, in June 2021, the developer completed an on site Department of Buildings pre-demolition inspection. Should the developer submit an application for demolition that is compliant with Codes and Zoning regulations, the DOB would be legally obligated to grant the permit, according to a DOB spokesperson.
As community members got word of the impending demolition, they reinvigorated their push to get the LPC to consider the home for preservation. Nearly two years passed since their recommendation was first submitted with the city with little guidance from LPC.
While the LPC does not have a formal application process for advocates looking to landmark buildings, areas or other culturally significant structures, it does take recommendations and conducts research into the validity of the request.
City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, who represents the district the home lies in, reached out to LPC and the DOB at the end of last month, getting involved with the fight to preserve the home. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards also got involved and reached out to the mayor’s office to see what could be done about landmarking the home last week.
Despite the LPC’s ruling, Richards’ office and Krishnan’s office were engaged in active conversations with the LPC about the future of the Janta House on Friday afternoon, according to a spokesperson in the borough president’s office.
However, a spokesperson for the LPC said the decision reached by the commission’s researchers was final.
Lemos McHale and the LPC said that they were restricted by the process they legally needed to follow in order to grant landmark status.
“In our process, however, applying historic preservation standards focused on the specific connection of a building with a person’s significant contributions to history, we have not found that the house meets the threshold of association with the activities for which the couple is considered significant, nor is it sufficiently documented as representing their significant contributions to history,” Lemos McHale wrote. “Therefore, the house does not appear to rise to the level of an individual landmark.”
Christian Cassagnol, the district manager of Community Board 4, has been advocating for the preservation of the home and called the LPC’s decision “terrible.”
“I'd like to have more transparency on the intricacies of how these applications are processed,” Cassagnol told the Eagle. “I'd love to see a standard operating procedure, how is it that you guys do this?”
“It would help us in the future whenever we're looking to landmark to give ourselves a good three year head start, which is absolutely ridiculous,” he added.
While demolition permits have yet to be filed with the Department of Buildings, the developer has begun work on the Janta House in Elmhurst, which community members say deserves landmark status. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
Zodet Negron, a spokesperson for the LPC, said the commissions review of the property and its inhabitants was thorough, and drawn out in length because they are required by law to meet certain standards.
This review process has been rigorous, and as a result lengthy due to several factors, first among them the agency’s need to meet the threshold for documenting that this house represents the Janta-Polczynskis’ significant contributions to the history of New York City, New York State, or the nation,” Negron said.
On Friday afternoon, the Janta House was surrounded by green, wooden fencing. While the home itself appears to be untouched, the garage has been gutted. Wooden planks and boards lined the yard. Construction on the home did not appear to be active.
“If the developer was smart, they put for that demo permit almost right away, not a couple of months, why wait?” Cassagnol said. “I’m not encouraging it, it’s just the smart thing to do. I don’t think the community standing in front of the house, holding hands is going to stop it.”
Krishnan said that after observing the city’s process with the Janta House, he’s considering introducing legislation to “to make sure this situation never happens again.”
“What I remain shocked by is that there is no mechanism under the law to stop a demolition of a building while a community, or anyone, has petitioned for a site to be landmarked,” Krishnan said.
Additionally, the councilmember said he hopes that LPC reforms the way it considers immigrant homes for landmarking and how they might vary from stories of landmarked homes that belonged to American-born historical figures.
“Immigrant stories necessarily are complex, they span multiple countries, they span navigating different identities and stories,” he said. “They involve life in one country, and life in the United States – and so the concept of home and the concept of what a house can mean for someone whose life is partly lived in one country and also partly lived here, is far more complex for immigrants than simply saying what activities happened in the house.”
Update: This story was updated to include comment from City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan on Monday, April 4, 2022.
