Roomy Ridgewood flats that marked a historic departure from the infamously overcrowded tenements of the lower East Side may soon gain city landmark status.
Rows of the innovative dwellings - built between 1908 and 1911 by German developer Gustave X. Mathews - fall into a proposed 91-building district that would bar demolitions and major alterations.
City Councilman Anthony Como (R-Middle Village) vowed to back an impending move to landmark the Mathews flats, which were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
"It's actually very rare to see blocks upon blocks of very consistent buildings like that," said Mary Beth Betts, research director of the city Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Betts said the commission hopes to designate the area - bounded largely by Forest Ave., Woodbine St., Fairview Ave. and Linden St. - in the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2009.
The measure would then move to the Council. Como, who won a June special election and is running for re-election against Democrat Elizabeth Crowley in November, supported landmarking as a way to maintain "the wonderful character that Ridgewood has to offer."
In the city's statement of significance on the Mathews flats, Landmarks officials described the Renaissance and Romanesque Revival structures - with iron-spotted brickwork and metal cornices - as "strikingly cohesive."
The three-story, six-apartment buildings presented a new tenement model that emphasized better living conditions for working-class immigrants arriving in the early 20th century.
Just a few years after the flats were completed, the city had such high regard for them that examples went on display at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.
In 2000, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated a nearby collection of houses in a one-block historic district on Stockholm St. between Woodward and Onderdonk Aves.
But civic leader Paul Kerzner pushed the city to landmark the entire National Register list of nearly 3,000 sites in the Ridgewood area.
Como promised to consider lending his support to such a move.
Councilwoman Diana Reyna (D-Williamsburg), who represents small parts of Ridgewood on the National Register, did not return messages seeking comment.
