The New York Times, July 23, 2000
(Probably I sent this out already, but I love to hear myself think.)

Want to bring a room of preservationists to a rolling boil?  Just say two
words: "vinyl siding".  Almost anywhere in a streetcar suburb you'll see
plenty of nice old houses cloaked with vinyl, aluminum and asphalt coverings.
 It's just the kind of thing historic district regulations are designed to
prevent, and even dedicated vinyl-lovers in historic districts don't even
bother to apply because they know they'll be turned down.  But Samuel and
Cynthia Green were determined to move ahead with vinyl siding installation on
their 1909 house at 245 Fenimore Street, in the Prospect Lefferts Gardens
Historic District, and nothing was going to stop them - at first.

The north side of Fenimore Street, from Flatbush to Rogers Avenue, was the
lower edge of an eight square block area sold off by the Lefferts family in
the 1890's - their 18th century homestead originally stood at Midwood Street
and Flatbush Avenue, but is now just inside the boundary of Prospect Park.
The first developers put up tightly packed rowhouses.  But when the land at
241, 245 and 249 Fenimore Street came up, the developer Henry Terboss built
more suburban-style wooden houses, completed in 1909.

The Colonial revival designs of his architect, Robert W. Firth, slightly
varied, but each house had a wide front porch. To judge from later
photographs they were plain clapboard on the first floor, with shingles on
the second and third.  The first occupants were people like Bernard Maltz,
39, a Russian born painting contractor, who lived at 245 with his family, and
Michael Ginnane, 52, Irish-born and in the ice business, who lived at 249
with his wife and eight children, seven daughters and a son.

In the 1920's, apartment development came to the area, but restrictions in
what is now called the Lefferts Manor Garden area prohibited multiple
dwellings.  That was when Bernard J. O'Connor lived at 245 Fenimore -
nicknamed "Smiling Barney", he had served with the police force from 1902 to
1928, retiring to serve as the police chief for the Sea Gate community until
his death in 1932.

Photographs of the area in the 1940's show that most of the houses were
intact at that time, but then came the home improvement craze of the 1950's
and 1960's.

Gloria White's house, at 241 Fenimore Street, was covered with yellow and
green aluminum siding sometime after her mother, Gwendolyn Euphemia Hackett,
bought it in 1960.  "She just got tired of worrying about the paint and trim"
says Mrs. White, a retired medical records clerk who subscribes to Old House
Journal and is a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  She
has a spectacular fifty year old powder blue Chambers stove,  bristling with
chrome fittings.  Most of the woodwork in her house is intact, with terrific
oak floors and unusual borders.  Mrs. White has had stained glass windows
reproduced from the original designs made for other windows in the house.

She does not like the siding, but says "at 72, I'm not removing it - who
knows what's underneath?" Some trim was cut off during the installation, and
the siding looks faded and worn, although still serviceable.  But no one
would confuse it with the original design - a Palladian window was squared
off and the siding seems to engulf the house.

Dorothy Joseph's house, at 249 Fenimore Street, was probably re-sided
[hyphenation will clearly differentiate between the two meanings of this
word] earlier - the broad, gray asphalt shingles on her upper floors look
like they're from the 1950's.  Mrs. Joseph, who retired as principal of PS 27
in Red Hook, has also restored parts of her interior, and was head of a
neighborhood group when the eight-block Prospect-Lefferts Gardens Historic
District was designated in 1979. She is happy with the Landmark designation,
but notes that there is work that goes on without the required Landmarks
permits.

Right between Mrs. White and Mrs. Joseph is 245 Fenimore Street, the Green's
house.  The upper two floors of the Green's house are covered in baby blue
modern siding, and they applied last summer to the Landmarks Commission to
cover the first floor in vinyl siding.

Terri Rosen Deutsch, a spokeswoman for the Commission, says that staff at the
Commission explained to the Greens that their policy is not to permit
synthetic siding on main facades.  Preservationists maintain that siding
gives a house a profoundly different look from that of historic materials,
that it can trap moisture and that architectural details are often cut away
or simplified to permit installation.

Most applicants fold up with such a response, but the Greens pressed on, and
even had a hearing scheduled for March 28th.   Coincidentally, that's when
the Vinyl Siding Institute announced its annual awards, which include a
division for Historic Restoration - a laughable contradiction in terms for
orthodox preservationists.  The Institute's web site,
http://www.vinylsiding.org, has a page rebutting the arguments of
preservationists, noting that some installers can do sensitive installations,
and that vinyl siding can be installed so that it does not trap moisture.

Mrs. Green says that saving the cost on repeated painting is a minor issue.
Rather, she and her husband are much more interested in reducing drafts and
heat loss in the house, and they want to "give it a face lift" in her words.

She also notes that most of the houses in the area already have modern
siding: "if others have it, why make such a big deal about it?"  They bought
the house in 1986.

Samuel Green, the Bishop of the Gospel Tabernacle Church of Jesus Christ
Apostolic, also owns a 38 unit apartment house and travels frequently setting
up new churches in other parts of the country. This winter, while the matter
was hanging, he said: "I'm waiting on them, because I like to be guided by
the law.  But if I can't, I'm going to go around them."

At the time Bishop Green noted that two Landmarks staff members noticed that
he had recently rebuilt his porch in brick - for which he did not seek a
permit from the Commission - "but they didn't say anything" he says.  Indeed,
Ms. Rosen-Deutsch says that there are at least two other buildings with
noticeably new work for which permits were not received, at 207 and 261
Fenimore.

But although the Vinyl Siding Institute gave out its awards, the Greens have
retreated.  First the Landmarks Commission offered them a low-interest loan
for preservation-type repairs, and it got the non-profit New York Landmarks
Conservancy to try to find other ways to meet the Greens' needs.  But Bishop
Green says it finally came down to money and vision.  As to the money, he
says it would cost him $30,000 to rip out rotted wood, insulate, and repair
and paint - versus $13,000 just for vinyl siding.  And as to vision, Bishop
Green remains convinced that siding is the way to go: "It keeps up the value,
plus, you don't want your house to look like the worst in the neighborhood."