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Bid to Landmark Marx Brothers Childhood Home on UES Gets the Hook

By DNAinfo Staff on July 22, 2010 9:13am

By Gabriela Resto-Montero

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

UPPER EAST SIDE — The joke was on the Marx Brothers supporters at a full meeting of Community Board 8 Wednesday when board members rejected a bid to landmark their childhood home.

In a 20 to 16 count, the board voted against preserving the comedic family's former home at 179 E. 93rd St. and bringing the house and the block into the Carnegie Hill Historic District.

"Whether it's architecturally significant or not is not the issue, it's the history" said John Phillips, who attended the meeting in support of the home's preservation.

"I don't understand how anyone could be against this," Phillips said.

Brothers Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Zeppo and Gummo Marx lived on the fourth floor of the four-story walk-up during their early vaudeville days before they made it big in classic films like A Night at the Opera.

Community Board 8 voted against designating the 179 East 93rd Street home where the Marx Brothers, Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Zeppo and Gummo, spent their childhoods, a landmark Wednesday.
Community Board 8 voted against designating the 179 East 93rd Street home where the Marx Brothers, Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Zeppo and Gummo, spent their childhoods, a landmark Wednesday.
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DNAinfo/Gabriela Resto-Montero

A letter from the Landmarks Preservation Commission read to board members before the vote said that the architecture of the East 93rd Street block between Lexington and Third Avenues had been too significantly altered in recent years to qualify for historic designation.

"The Landmarks Commission is simply wrong," said Susan Kathryn Hefti, who has spearheaded efforts to protect the block for the East 93rd Street Beautification Association.

"I can't think of another block that evokes more cultural and architectural history than ours," Hefti said.

The full board's vote went against its Landmark Committee's decision Monday, which voted seven to one to protect the block.