On the north side of busy Hunts Point Avenue, just before it reaches the on-ramp to the Bruckner Expressway, stands one of the most unusual buildings in Hunts Point.
It looks like a country cottage that has multiplied into a long series of little houses, each with its own sharply-peaked attic window outlined in red rising from the sharply-angled roof.
It houses a “gentleman’s club,” a pizza joint, a fried chicken restaurant, and other small businesses, and has a seedy, run-down look.
Few would guess that it was designed by one of the nation’s great architects, Cass Gilbert, who was responsible for what was once the tallest building in the world, the Woolworth Building in lower Manhattan. Gilbert also designed the building that houses the United States Supreme Court.
Now, a task force appointed by former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr. has recommended that the Hunts Point Avenue building become a New York City landmark.
Landmark status safeguards distinguished architecture or buildings that have played an important role in the city’s history or cultural heritage. The outsides of landmarks cannot be changed without permission from the landmarks commission.
It turns out that the building at 904 Hunts Point Avenue was once a train station. Built in 1908, it linked the South Bronx and New Rochelle, serving commuters on the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad until 1931.
The task force also called the Corpus Christi Monastery to join the BankNote building across on Lafayette Avenue as a landmark. The 116-year-old building continues to house an order of cloistered nuns.
A shrine to Puerto Rican music in Longwood housed in a century-old building that the task force says is worthy of preservation itself would also be safeguarded, if city Landmarks Preservation Commission acts on the task force recommendations. The Manhasset Building at the corner of Longwood and Prospect avenues is already listed on the National Register of Historic Places because of Casa Amadeo, the record store on its ground floor.
If the landmarks commission acts on the recommendations, the buildings would join the Longwood Historic District and the Bright Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church and the newly-named Hunts Point branch of the New York Public Library on the roster of the city’s landmarks.