POINT OF VIEW

Villa Rosa Bonheur: It's not too late for regrets

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One of the feelings I hate most is knowing that you could have saved something beautiful, irreplaceable, but couldn’t.

When I was a kid, it was the beauty of extinct animals — gone. Why didn’t someone try to save at least some of them?

Now it’s the Villa Rosa Bonheur, this enchanting building at 2395 Palisade Ave. (built in 1924), situated on a small site east of the Bradley Terrace stairs, which are administered by the city’s transportation department, and which hundreds of people use every day to reach the Spuyten Duyvil Metro-North station.

The Villa Rosa already has had its beautiful antique red terra cotta tile roof destroyed by a developer who originally sought from the city’s buildings department to keep this landmark-worthy edifice intact, only raising its unit number from seven to 11.

Wrong! He’s now aiming to demolish the whole beautiful structure and put up, on this small ridge of land with virtually no parking attached, a 50-unit, seven-story structure where there had once been a graceful four-story one.

The developer, Timber Equities owned by Joseph Seidenfeld, has at this point no actual permit from the DOB to construct anything. All it does have is a permit to demolish this gorgeous building, with its hand-hewn rock outer walls, and original series of widow’s walks taking advantage of the views.

It also has no permit to deal with asbestos abatement. Testing was done on the outside of the building to see if any asbestos from this part of the structure might be leaching into the air to threaten the health of people, especially the elderly and children, in neighboring buildings. Answer: “No, it won’t do this.”

But that does not mean that asbestos in the lower walls inside the house, once a wrecking ball hits them, won’t spray asbestos all over the place, or that asbestos in the lower basement area will absolutely avoid every human in the area.

In other words, this ransack destruction of a beautiful building is not only aesthetically revolting, it’s still a health threat. There is also the question of during the many months the Villa will be both destroyed and replaced with a building hardly suited to its footprint, how will hundreds, even thousands, of people be able to negotiate the Bradley Terrace stairs?

Timber Equities will erect scaffolding over their new construction site, but can it guarantee the safety of Metro-North customers who need these stairs to get to and from work every day?

There also is the question of how much Palisade Avenue itself, near the site, will Timber equities be obstructing, as well as the major question of how deep down close to the foundation structures of the Henry Hudson Bridge will Timber be driving digging equipment while excavating its own foundations?

I have lived in Spuyten Duyvil for almost 30 years, and have never seen the parking problem so acute as now. Often it takes local residents an hour to find street parking. Congratulations! Timber is proposing shoehorning another 50 units next door to us. Some of these units will have more than one car. Anyone want to do the parking math?

This is still definitely not a done deal. We all need to let our elected officials, the buildings department, the transportation department, and even Metro-North know how much this offends the beauty and scale of our neighborhood.

You can learn more about efforts to preserve Spuyten Duyvil by emailing savevrb@gmail.com, asking about progress to save Villa Rosa Bonheur, and offering to help.

The author is a resident of Villa Charlotte Bronte, a neighboring sister building to Villa Rosa Bonheur.

Perry Brass,

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