The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission has put a set of 19th-century Chelsea row houses used in the Underground Railroad on track to become landmarks, as the agency is slated to consider the properties at a hearing tomorrow.

The buildings, which create a new “Lamartine Place” historic district, run from 333 to 359 West 29th Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues. Neighbors in the area have devoted considerable attention to the buildings, particularly as the owner of one of them, 339 West 29th Street, was planning a rooftop addition (landmark status would make such an alteration far more difficult to complete, and any addition would likely have to be contextual).

The properties were also part of the 1863 Civil War Draft Riots, when New Yokers took to the streets in protest of the draft, burning houses and fighting the police.

From the commission’s staff summary:

The row houses standing since the mid-nineteenth century on West 29th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues are remarkable for their association with several well-known abolitionist families, for their connection to the Underground Railroad, and for being among the very few documented surviving structures associated with the Civil War Draft Riots of 1863, a pivotal period in New York City history.

Also up for landmarking, per the commission's agenda: the La Mama Experimental Theater at 74 East 4th Street; two buildings on West 56th Street; two libraries in the Bronx; and a few other houses in Manhattan.

Early in the day at the landmarks hearing, the never-ending saga that is the proposed new St. Vincent’s West Village hospital comes before the commission. The hospital is expected to present plans for its new building on the site of the O’Toole building.

After joining Representative Carolyn Maloney and federal Transportation Secretary Mary Peters for an announcement in Penn Station about plans for a high-speed rail line to Washington, I asked Michael Bloomberg if he’d like to see Vito Fossella back in elected office again.

“Oh, I don’t know. That’s up to Vito and his constituents,” Bloomberg said. Later, another reporter asked the mayor if Fossella’s actions were “so reprehensible that you have to denounce them?”

Bloomberg responded by asking the reporter, “If you ever get in trouble, how many people will stand up for you?”

Representative Carolyn Maloney had seemed to distinguish herself up to this point by the brazenness of her maneuvering for the Clinton seat. She openly touted her credentials as a potential senator, and, most notably, went to the trouble of hiring a consulting firm as part of her campaign to convince Governor David Paterson to appoint her.

But now it looks like she was merely ahead of the curve.

Nick Confessore just reported that Caroline Kennedy will openly seek the Clinton seat, and that she too has hired political professionals to help her effort.

A knowledgeable source I spoke to confirmed that she will campaign for the seat and that she has hired Josh Isay's consulting firm, Knickerbocker SKD, to help.

Plummeting economy be damned!

A developer called Abram Sabo filed plans on Thursday with the Buildings Department to erect a 14-story, 150-room hotel in the hinterlands of Times Square, at 612 West 47th Street -- that's faaaar, far west, between 11th and 12th avenues.

We called Mr. Sabo to ask him what hotel chain he was working with, what he could be thinking, and the like. But he wouldn't answer our questions.

Given the financial climate, building a new hotel doesn't seem like the wisest of decisions. As The Ob