From its formation the BLC has worked with ownership and the Belnord community to conserve a well-run building for residents and the neighborhood.
The Belnord Landmark Conservancy was formed in the early 1990s by a group of tenants living in the Belnord, the Italian Renaissance courtyard building that occupies the entire city block between 86th and 87th Streets and Broadway and Amsterdam on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Designed as a luxurious apartment building to attract New Yorkers living in brownstones and townhouses, the Belnord opened in difficult financial times in 1909, when both New York and the country still suffered from the Panic of 1907.
Over the decades the Belnord’s economic health and physical condition faced the same challenges as New York City as a whole: good times in the 1920s, economic depression in the 1930s, strains of war time in the 1940s, and the same immense post-war problems encountered by all American cities. In the 1950s many of the grand, large apartments were subdivided inelegantly into railroad flats. By the 1960s, the Belnord was in serious trouble.
The BLC’s original leaders included co-chairs Tom Vitullo-Martin and Sumner Rosen, treasurer Vuka Roussakis, and active citizens Jeffrey Rubin, Herb Mayer, Rebecca Skydell, and Stanley Ackerman.
From its formation the BLC has worked with ownership and the Belnord community to conserve a well-run building for residents and the neighborhood. In 1994, with the cooperation of the BLC, Gary Barnett, through Property Markets Group, purchased The Belnord, marking his first major New York City real estate acquisition. Barnett, the founder of Extell Development, sold the residential Belnord in 2015 while retaining the retail space.
A 1994 amended agreement between the BLC and ownership attaches to the building. Detailed plans for the Belnord’s rehabilitation have been posted by Landmark West. Much of the architectural restoration has been handled by Page Ayres Cowley Associates.
