By Shiori Okazaki

A look at the list of landmark districts in New York City says it all. Manhattan has 48 sites. Queens has only seven.

This angers Paul Graziano.

“The Landmark Preservation Commission (LPC) is biased again the suburbs,” said Graziano, the first vice president of the Historic Districts Council, a New York City-based advocacy group.

For years, he and the residents of Broadway-Flushing in Queens have argued that the neighborhood’s cornucopia of architectural gems should be protected under landmarking. Many of the 1,330 eclectic houses date back to the first half of the twentieth century, ranging in style from Colonial to Tudor to Arts and Crafts. But the LPC has repeatedly turned down their preservation request.

Most of the historic houses of Broadway-Flushing were built in the 1920s, when Queens expanded as a bedroom community for people commuting to Manhattan. The houses follow certain aesthetic standards—like slanted roofs, the area of property, and the prohibition of fences within 20 feet of the property line—that were agreed upon when this district was founded in 1906.

“It was really the first planned suburban community in New York City,” said Mel Siegel, former president of the Broadway-Flushing Homeowners Association.

Over time, new developers ignored the aesthetic covenants, and the neighborhood began to change. In 1964, Flushing underwent rapid development to prepare for the World’s Fair. That was when Nicholas Ferrigno and his wife, Marjorie, founded the Homeowners Association.

“We figured we need some kind of means to keep the neighborhood as nice as it is,” said Ferrigno. The Association has been active since then, and now counts 400 families among its members. With the help of Graziano, they put Broadway-Flushing on the state and national historic register in 2006.

It is not possible, however, to stop new developers unless the LPC recognizes the area. The local Community Board and Councilman Tony Avella both support the landmark proposal. But last February, the LPC sent a letter to Avella denying the proposal on the grounds that the area lacked a critical mass of architecturally worthy buildings.

“We said [that] the decision is based on the number of inappropriate new buildings in the area, the numerous alterations to the houses, such as filling in of porches, residing, changing the shape and configuration of openings and removal of decorative details and the lack of strong architectural significance,” LPC spokesperson Lisi De Bourbon wrote in an email.

She added that Queens enjoyed less landmarking status than Manhattan and Brooklyn because the borough developed later and less densely.

The LPC’s explanation presents a Catch-22 for Broadway-Flushing. Unless the landmarking is put into effect, new developers continue to build houses that lack even more uniformity.

“There’s been, in the last 20 years, an anything-goes attitude by some of the realtors,” Graziano said. Many destroy old houses and build two on the same property. Not only is each residence smaller, but the property is also used to capacity, leaving little room for gardens and greenery. Siegel, to cite another example, lives on the same block as a house that operates as a hotel. Across the street stands a garish, pink-tiled mansion.

This is not to mention homeowners who alter their own abodes. The Homeowners Association represents only 40 percent of residents and has no influence over the others, including one family who stripped the exterior of their Colonial-style building and changed the color to rose.

Howard Duffy, 75, who has been living in the same single-family house since 1967, fears that it is being devalued.

“Most of the value of the house is the value of the property,” he said. With new multi-family houses in the area, which economize by cramming in more people onto the plot, he believes that real estate values in the neighborhood are going down.

Adam Razik, the manager of RE/MAX Universal Real Estate, which counts Broadway-Flushing among its properties, disagrees.

“I don’t know if [new development] devalues the homes,” he said. “On the contrary, it might help raise the value, because with new development comes new commerce.”

A criticism leveled against those pushing for landmarking is that they discriminate against newcomers, many of whom are Asian, said Graziano.

“There are people, particularly in this town, who use racism to get what they want,” he said. “The neighborhood is 15 percent Asian perhaps, in terms of property owners and homeowners. Eighty-five percent of the property owners want this district to be landmarked, and there are plenty of Asian people.”

Despite continued vigorous lobbying, some advocates are pessimistic about landmarking prospects.

“There’s a lot of money involved,” said Duffy. “I don’t think it will come to pass. Not on behalf of people like me.”

The house of Nicholas Ferrigno, a co-founder of the Broadway-Flushing Homeowner’s Association. (Above)

A new mansion breaks the historical uniformity of the neighborhood. (Below)