Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look back at the career of Sarah Carroll, the chair of the city ‘s Landmarks Preservation Commission. She’s retiring. We’ll also get details on “deed theft” charges against two people accused of forging an 88-year-old woman’s signature and taking ownership of her house in Queens.
Before the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission moved to a new office in April, the chair, Sarah Carroll, found herself going through old filing cabinets. In one was a report with a prediction by one of her predecessors, Beverly Moss Spatt: There were probably 35,000 buildings in New York City that could be designated as landmarks. The city has exceeded Spatt’s expectations from the 1970s: There are more than 38,000 landmarks, including 1,437 buildings and sites that have been designated since Carroll took over in 2018. Now Carroll, 59, is retiring. She said she wanted to move to Maine, where she spent summers as a child and where her older daughter is going to college. She has been unusual among the 12 chairs in the 60-year history of the commission. While her predecessors mostly had backgrounds as civic activists, architects or lawyers, she was the first with a master’s degree in preservation. She was also the first who had been a staff member at the commission. She started as a public information associate in 1994 and rose through the ranks, spending nearly 10 years as the director of preservation and four as the executive director. She was also the first chair who was appointed by one mayor, Bill de Blasio, and reappointed by the next, Eric Adams, who in a statement called her “a champion for preservation.” Her tenure gets mixed reviews from preservationists. Peg Breen, the president of the private New York Landmarks Conservancy, called her “dedicated and thoughtful.” “I’m not sure any chair will ever totally satisfy the preservation world,” Breen said. “Has the commission done as many designations as we’d like? No, probably not. Has she tried to stretch the definition of preservation to be much more inclusive to the various constituencies in the city? Yes, she has, to her credit. And she has shown that historic districts can grow and change, but the point is to have that done appropriately.” Simeon Bankoff, a former executive director of the Historic Districts Council, a preservation group, described Carroll as “a cautious institutionalist.” “Many of the actions that happened under her rather long chairmanship became very aligned with what were perceived to be the administration’s priorities, and it was largely felt the commission lost much of its independence,” he said. Carroll told me that City Hall had not dictated the landmarks commission’s agenda: “That sort of micromanagement hasn’t existed.” But she also said that “as each administration lays out its priorities,” someone in her job has to “think creatively about how we can continue to do our work within that lens.” Some preservationists complain that the pace of designations has slowed under Carroll, and building owners often worry about the time it takes for the commission to issue permits for repairs or renovations to landmark buildings or buildings in historic districts. Carroll said that the workload had exploded: When she was hired, the commission received 3,500 applications for permits every year. Now the number is over 12,000, she said. But she said the commission had leveraged technology to keep up, with a web portal to simplify electronic filing. The result, she said, is that most permits are issued within 10 days. “This notion that it takes, you know, months to get a permit from the landmarks commission, it doesn’t bear out when you actually look at the work we’re doing,” she said. As for designating new landmarks, she said that with so many buildings and historic districts already designated, she had been able to put a priority on “neighborhoods that have been less well-represented.” She mentioned the first scenic landmark in the Bronx (the Old Croton Aqueduct Walk) and the 113-year-old Bronx Opera House on East 149th Street, designated a landmark in 2023. It was built by George M. Cohan, who was famous for songs like “Give My Regards to Broadway,” and his longtime producing partner Sam Harris. Carroll also said the commission had designated a number of sites associated with Black history on her watch. WEATHER As the sun shines, temperatures will near 81. Night conditions will be mostly clear with a low around 66. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Aug. 15 (Feast of the Assumption). The latest Metro news
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Renuka Bherwani and her husband bought a two-story rowhouse in Queens in 1986 after immigrating from India. After he died in 2022, a woman named Deepa Roy began showing up at the house, saying she was a friend and eventually asking to move in. Bherwani’s son, Kamal Bherwani, and his wife said no. But prosecutors say that Roy and a man named Victor Quimis eventually forged Renuka Bherwani’s signature on several documents so they could take ownership of the house in Kew Gardens Hills. By then Ms. Bherwani was in her 80s and struggling with dementia. Prosecutors call it a textbook example of the fraudulent practice known as “deed theft.” On Thursday, Roy, 68, and Quimis, 39, became the first people to be charged under a 2024 New York State law that made deed theft a form of grand larceny. Quimis also faces a charge of money laundering. Prosecutors said the pair eventually took out a $550,000 mortgage on the house, paying off money owed by Ms. Bherwani, who died in June. They pocketed the rest — more than $300,000, according to prosecutors. But Letitia James, the New York attorney general, said that the house would be returned to the family, assuming that prosecutors win the case. My colleagues Mihir Zaveri and Samantha Latson write that deed theft has long been a concern in New York City, with fraudsters targeting older homeowners, often in gentrifying neighborhoods. State Senator Zellnor Myrie, a Democrat who sponsored the new law, said that deed theft “disproportionately impacts lower-income, older or otherwise vulnerable homeowners, especially Black and brown New Yorkers who have spent generations in the same home.” But it’s not always obvious to homeowners that they have been victims. METROPOLITAN DIARY Central Park West
Dear Diary: I was walking east on 72nd Street recently. When I reached Central Park West I overheard two women chatting. One gestured to a nearby building. “So I’m trying to string him along until at least November,” she said, “because, you know, this is where the parade starts.” — Chloë Schwartz Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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