In a Nov. 14 vote, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission granted the New York Cab Company building, located on the corner of 75th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, landmark status by a vote of 10 to 0. The historic designation means that the façade of the 1890 building cannot be changed without the commission’s approval, although the building’s use is not restricted.

The New York Cab Company building, designed by the architect C. Abbott French, originally served as a commercial stable where neighborhood residents rented horses and carriages. Although the stable became a parking garage in the early 1900s, for the past 20 years preservationists have tried to win landmark status for the building and a similar former stable located nearby, the Dakota Stables, based on their historic and architectural significance.

The commission, however, denied landmark status for the Dakota Stables building, on the corner of 77th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, by a vote of 8 to 2. Related Companies, a real estate developer, has entered into a contract to buy the site and plans to construct a 16-story luxury condo building designed by the architect Robert A. M. Stern.

Demolition work began on the Dakota Stables building this past September, after the Landmarks Preservation Commission had agreed to consider landmark status for the building, but before the commission had “calendared” it -- set a date for its public hearing. In the interim period before the public hearing was scheduled, the city’s building department issued a work permit for removal of the building’s facade. On Sept. 27, Council Member Gale Brewer obtained a stop work order to prevent further alterations, but a large number of the building’s original arched wooden windows had already been removed.

“The owner made substantial alterations to the building that preempted our agency from considering it further as an individual New York City landmark,” said Elisabeth deBourbon, a spokeswoman for the commission.

Brewer, who represents the neighborhood, said she supported the commission’s decision to grant the New York Cab Company building landmark status and that the building’s owner, Barbara Miller, Ltd., is very supportive of the landmark designation. In contrast, Brewer expressed disappointment about the commission’s decision not to protect the former Dakota Stables building.

“We’ll never know if Dakota Stables would have been given landmark status if its façade had not been altered,” said Gale Brewer, the local city council member. “I’m very sad. I love that building.”

Peg Breen, president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, said that the city needs a new type of regulatory process that would allow the building department to hold up a work permit when a building is under consideration for landmark status by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

“I just don’t think it helps to calendar a building, then watch its demise, then say never mind,” Breen said.