Fearing Penn Sta. Development, Lithuanians Seek to Landmark 150-year-old HQ Building

For more than a century the Lithuanian Alliance Building has sat on the borderlands of New York City history. Built in 1876 for the city’s growing population as it moved relentlessly uptown, the four-story building was bought by the Lithuanian Alliance of America in 1910 because it was strategically located between Ellis Island, where immigrants were arriving in waves, and the newly opened Pennsylvania Station, where many departed almost as quickly for points west.

Lithuanians, in particular, often followed their brethren to the coalfields of Pennsylvania and the stockyards of Chicago. The building, at 307 W. 30th St, served as a headquarters to support their adaptation to America, providing insurance and advice, a Lithuanian language newspaper and cultural activities that have continued to this day. In those early years, the immigrants could also sleep upstairs, before walking the block to Penn Station in the morning to catch their trains west.

Now, the building sits again on a new borderland, between the city’s past and future. The proximity to Penn Station, its reason for being where it is, has put it in the path of redevelopment discussions. The Lithuanian government and the alliance, a not for profit, want none of that discussion. They could presumably sell the building for a lot of money.

“Realtors call all the time,” said the president of the alliance, Laima Mihailovich. But she always says no, thank you, Mihailovich explains, because preserving the history of Lithuanians in America is even more valuable. “The Lithuanian Alliance building is a safe harbor for Lithuanians in New York for over a century,” said one of the building’s key advocates, the Consul General of Lithuania to New York, Dovydas Spokauskas, “from immigrants in search of the American dream to those who fought for Lithuania’s independence from the Soviets. These days it is not only a vibrant cultural hub but a real symbol of Lithuania ‘s enduring partnership with the United States.”

To preserve that history, the Alliance has taken the unusual step, for a New York property owner, of asking the the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate their own building a landmark. The Commission staff has endorsed the request, and the commission voted last month to hear arguments for why, or not, the building should be designated as an individual landmark. A hearing is yet to be scheduled.

“The Lithuanian Alliance building has high integrity and is architecturally significant as a Neo-Greco building that has served as the headquarters of the Lithuanian Alliance and hub of Lithuanian culture for over a century since 1910,” the Landmark’s staff wrote. The four-story building was erected in 1876, originally as housing for the city’s burgeoning middle class. “Early tenants included a dealer in fine papers, a bookseller and a saloon keeper,” the staff wrote.

In 1910 the building entered the city’s immigration history. There were roughly 15,000 Lithuanians living in New York and New jersey then, and thousands more passing through. “Fraternal alliances such as the Lithuanian Alliance were set up to help fellow immigrants weather the difficulties of life in the United States,” the landmark staff recorded.“It offered help in the form of material aid like insurance policies, health benefits, and loans, as well as seeking to preserve and propagate Lithuanian cultural heritage.

Tevyne (Fatherland) a weekly newspaper published by the Lithuanian Alliance starting in 1896 covering Lithuanian news for immigrants and it was printed at 301 west 30th street starting around 1910.”

Decades of bound copies of the newspaper are still stored in the basement. The officers of the alliance have watched with concern for years as discussions ebbed and flowed around renovating Penn Station and redeveloping the neighborhood around it. But a presentation in 2021 sent their concerns soaring.

The state of New York made a presentation describing property in the path of a possible southern expansion of Penn Station. The presentation showed the tracks for this expansion passing directly below the Alliance building on their way toward the block just to the east, often referred to in the neighborhood as block 780.

This set off a major effort to secure recognitions of the buildings importance as protection from the wreckers ball. They won placement of the building on the National Register of Historic Places. In addition, under an agreement between the United States and Lithuania, the Lithuanian government has placed the building on a list of sites in the United States it considered of “cultural significance” to Lithuanians. Landmark status would provide further protections against destruction, although not absolute ones.

It is unclear at the moment whether, or in what form, a southern expansion of Penn Station might proceed. Andy Byford, who was placed in charge of the transformation of Penn Station by the Trump Administration (Amtrak owns the station), has said that before any expansion is considered he first wants to establish how much service can be increased within the stations existing footprint.

Other advocates, including the Regional Plan Association, have urged Amtrak and the commuter railroads which use Penn Station, to keep a possible expansion on the table. The Railroads would have an opportunity at the hearing to oppose the landmarking of the Alliance building if they thought it would limit their flexibility to expand the station.

Byford did not respond to a request to comment on the issue. He is in the midst of an accelerated bidding process to select a master developer to work with Amtrak on rebuilding the station. Four major groups are competing for the project and Byford has said he plans to recommend his candidate to the Amtrak Board in May.

One other element of the selection process could intersect with the Lithuanian Alliance building. Byford has invited the bidders to suggest development around the station that might generate revenue for rebuilding the station. This is essentially the same idea then Governor Cuomo embraced in area development plan known as the GPP (General Project Plan).

Governor Hochul later “decoupled” the funding of Penn Station from the GPP, but she has never withdrawn it. The GPP established a set of sites around Penn station for development of office towers and other projects.

The Lithuanian Alliance building sits on the very southwest corner of site 1. Since the bidding process for master developer is being conducted confidentially, it is not known whether any of the bidders see site 1, or any part of it, as a development site under their proposal. Spokaukus said he had been surprised by how much of his time as General Counsel has been taken up advocating for the preservation of Lithuanian heritage in the United States.

“The whole East Coast, including New York City, is full of Lithuanian churches, community halls, former schools. Some of them are no longer in Lithuanian hands and that makes their preservation much more difficult,” Spokaukus said. “That is another reason why it is so important to preserve the Lithuanian Alliance building for the community.”