Landmarks Commission Approves East Village Historic District The city created a historic district Tuesday aimed at preserving the heart of the East Village. The new district, formally known as the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District, encompasses 330 tenements, row houses, houses of worship, theaters and other, institutional buildings. Its central axis runs up Second Avenue from East 2nd to East 7th Streets; it extends west almost to Third Avenue and juts east to Avenue A. The 6-1 vote by the Landmarks Preservation Commission capped a somewhat contentious process; the district was opposed by churches and synagogues who said the designation would make it more expensive for them to maintain their buildings and hurt their property values. The chairman of the commission, Robert B. Tierney, called the buildings in the district "an incredibly intact collection" that encapsulates the American immigrant experience -- successive waves, from Germans to Eastern Europeans to Latinos, made the area their first home -- and pays homage to the neighborhood's central role in the history of 20th Century Bohemia. The lone commission member to vote against the district, Margery Perlmutter, said before the vote that most of the tenements in the district were not worth preserving. Two other slivers of the neighborhood - a block of East 10th Street north of Tompkins Square Park and an enclave around St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery - were already landmarked. Before approving the new district, the commission excluded six buildings from the original proposal because they were deemed stylistically insignificant and, in the cases of 114 and 116 First Avenue, because their owner was opposed to the designation, said Elisabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the commission.