The New York Post's Annie Karni, a former colleague of mine at the New York Sun, does a pretty good job of highlighting the absurd excesses of New York City's landmarks preservation commission, which has designated a BP gas station — the old Gaseteria at Lafayette and Houston streets — as a historic landmark.
Let anyone without a lot of political clout with City Hall beware: the value of property in this city can be dramatically reduced by government action. The Bloomberg administration has expanded landmark districts, but the legal point was lost here long before Mr. Bloomberg became mayor, in 1978, in the case Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City.
Earlier coverage of the New York Landmarks Commission on this site is here and here.
