The owner of a historic home on a prominent street corner in Jersey City was hoping to subdivide his large property and build a new building alongside the one built in 1915. However, the Colonial Revival home at 577 Bergen Avenue – also known as 6 Gifford Avenue – is located in the West Bergen-East Lincoln Park Historic District and required approval from the Historic Preservation Commission, which recently denied the subdivision application.
The application raised interesting questions about how new development should coexist with older buildings inside local historic districts. The proposed subdivision would have created a 25-foot-wide, 3,215-square-foot lot, which is allowed in the zone where the home is located, according to Carolyn Worstell, a planner for Dresdner Robin, hired by 6 Gifford LLC.
The issue is whether the property surrounding a historic building should also be protected. The city’s Historic Preservation Office appeared to side with the developer, issuing a report recommending that the subdivision be allowed, as it would not cause an “adverse effect” on the historic district.
“I think a lot of this comes down to whether historic districts allow subdivisions of properties —this commission has seen and approved subdivisions throughout the historic districts,” said Michael Achimov, senior specialist in the city office. “This does not interfere with the historic condition of the historic property — they will still have a large setback between the property and Bergen Avenue. They will also have a pretty sizable rear yard relative to what we see downtown and much of the rest of the city.”
The office’s recommendation, however, alone is not binding and required a vote from the Historic Preservation Commission, which sided with residents of the historic district, voting 6-0 to deny the subdivision application.
Most of Jersey City’s historic districts are located downtown, where most development in the city occurs, so it makes sense that the Historic Preservation Office would leave room to allow new development alongside preserving historic buildings. But the West Bergen-East Lincoln Park Historic District is a residential zone comprised of many one-family homes, and larger yards that residents appear to want protected.
Charlene Burke, president of the West Side Community Alliance, said the purpose of designating a historic district isn’t just about protecting the buildings within it but also the “spatial context” between the homes. The side yard, she argued, is part of the historic property that should be protected.
“The historic district guidelines explicitly address landscaping because the district consists predominantly of freestanding homes with prominent front yards — and yards are viewed as a core component of the district’s historic streetscape character,” Burke said. “That is why this subdivision should be denied.”
Burke, who lives in the neighborhood and was among the leading voices in designating the historic district, which became official in 2016, said she believed that the designation would “prevent actions like this.”
“I’ll always fight for the historic district I helped create — because what else did I do it for?” she told Jersey Digs.
Esther Wintner, another resident of the historic district, said the 2016 designation brought to her neighborhood a feeling of safety from “out-of-scale development” that is happening in other neighborhoods.
“There is something I believe we feel living in a historic district — and that’s the feeling of safety,” she said, “that we will not be impacted in the same way that we see going on around us.” “I don’t want that to happen,” she said. “We want to keep our historic district the way it was intended after all that was said and done.”
