Williamsburg conversion threatened by landmark ruling.

The City's architecture buffs scored an important victory last week when the Landmarks Preservation Commission conferred landmark status on the Austin, Nichols & Company Warehouse building in Williamsburg.

The structure was about to undergo a makeover in preparation for a condominium conversion, but the Landmarks ruling will limit the owner, Moishe Kestenbaum, in his redesign plans.

Created in 1913 as a grocery warehouse by noted architect Cass Gilbert (who also designed the Woolworth Building), the Austin, Nichols & Company structure has served primarily as a rental residential property in the past few years.

However, in 2004, as the Williamsburg/Greenpoint rezoning got underway, the owner decided to convert the building into luxury condominiums and had planned to put in bigger windows and add a setback on top of the building's roof in the process.

But community activists and architectural historians who asked the city to protect the building say that the Warehouse is one of the rare examples of the Egyptian revival style in New York and should be preserved.

"It is one of the most architecturally significant buildings on the North Brooklyn waterfront," said Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council.

"It is a significant warehouse building by one of New York City's most important architects. There are elements of it that are highly unusual."

According to Ward Dennis, a preservation consultant and member of Brooklyn Community Board #1, "The net effect [of the proposed changes] was a building that looked a lot more like a carnival cruise ship than a warehouse.

When the application for modifications came out, the renderings were a complete abomination in terms of historic building."

On the other hand, Brooklyn councilman David Yassky has been actively opposing the application for landmark status.

According to Yassky, fights over such buildings as the Austin, Nichols & Company Warehouse deter the revitalization of the Williamsburg waterfront and go against the city's goals in rezoning the area. "It doesn't seem to be an architecturally significant building. The developer, however, has made a lot of considerations in respect to some community members' opinion that it is," said Yassky's spokesman.

"The [current] rendering has an identical facade to the original and would maintain what some consider the building's significant architectural elements. Any other landmarking would hold off or maybe even stop the project and we would continue to have an empty, decrepit building on the waterfront."

However, Lisa Kersavage, a Cress/ FRF fellow for historic preservation with the Municipal Art Society, challenges this assertion. She points out that the building is currently a successful rental property, though some tenants have recently received eviction notices in preparation for the condo conversion.

"If the building is empty it's not because of its economic viability, but because everyone has been evicted," she said. "Besides, the Commission doesn't require that the building be frozen. We are certain that the Commission and the owner can come up with reasonable plans. This is a building by a very important architect, it looks striking on the waterfront and it's architecturally dramatic."

Ward Dennis, who lives in the neighborhood, also denies that the preservation fight had anything to do with the planned conversion, though renters who have been paying less than $1,000 a month at the property are about to be priced out of their homes.

"This is not about how the building is used, it's really about preserving the building itself," he said. "There are plenty of industrial buildings that are converted to residential use that are landmarks. [The ruling] simply regulates what you can put on top of [it]."