Dear Mayor de Blasio:

Your help is needed to save one of the City’s oldest landmarks, the Erasmus Academy Building, which dates from 1787.  Alexander Hamilton was one of the Academy’s endowers, along with other founding fathers of note. 

The Academy Building is a designated City landmark (1966) and listed in the National Register of Historic Places (1975).  It sits in the center of another landmark complex, Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush, Brooklyn.  As you may know, Erasmus was the alma mater for hundreds of well-known people, including Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Lainie Kazan, Beverly Sills, Barbara Stanwyck and Eli Wallach; writers Bernard Malamud and Mickey Spillane; and builder Sam Lefrak.

The Academy Building once housed classrooms, administrative offices, a library and a museum.  It was always the pride of the campus.  Abandoned since 2000, the wooden building has been deteriorating steadily as a result of an unusual city agency dilemma: although the Academy Building is under the auspices of the city’s Department of Education (DOE), the DOE has maintained that it cannot use any of its resources for stabilizing and/or renovating the building since it cannot be used as classroom space.

We wish to restore the Erasmus Academy Building to the place it once held, so it can exemplify the City’s fine stewardship of its heritage and historic architecture.  We want to show Erasmus students that history matters.

This petition urges you to transfer the Erasmus Academy Building to another city agency with the following immediate objectives:

   1.  Perform emergency repairs to stop water penetration;
   2.  Identify an appropriate user; and
   3.  Implement the requisite disposition and occupancy procedures that will 
        enable a new user to improve and tenant the building         

CO-SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS (list in formation):

•    Erasmus Hall High School Alumni Association
    
•    Friends of the Erasmus Academy Building
    
•   Historic Districts Council
   
•   IMPACCT Brooklyn
    
•   New York Landmarks Conservancy
    
•  The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution
   
  cc:   Public Officials including:
               Letitia James, Public Advocate
               Scott Stringer, NYC Comptroller
               Eric Adams, Brooklyn Borough President
               Rodneyse Bichotte, NYS Assembly
               Yvette Clarke, US Congress
               Daniel Dromm, NYC City Council
               Mathieu Eugene, NYC City Council
               Carmen Farina, NYC Schools Chancellor
               Robert Jackson, District Leader
               Alan Maisel, NYC City Council
               Kevin Parker, NYS Senator
               Ruth L. Pierpont, Deputy Commissioner for Historic Preservation, NYS
                          Office of Parks Recreation & Historic Preservation 
              Charles Schumer, US Senator
              Meenakshi Srinivasan, Chair, NYC Landmarks Preservation    
                           Commission    
              Melissa Mark Viverito, Speaker of the NYC City Council