“My husband and I own the Big Blue House, 271 9th Street and also own and operate Slope Music…As far as the color of the building goes there is a back story. The house has Landmark status which has been nothing but a pain for us. The Landmark status given to neighborhoods and homes is meant to make sure that there is preservation of historical sites and I understand that some developers and evil doers would choose to ignore preservation and replace it with profit. We have owned the building since 1981 and have invested every dollar we could in taking care of the building. When it came to repainting the house afew years ago we actually wanted to change the color back to what it might have been in 1846. HPD was NO help and after countless submission and rejections of forms we were told that unless we painted the house blue, which was the present color of the house they would give us a violation. So we painted it blue… bluer than it had been!”–Urban Environmentalist NYC: The Blue Jewel Revealed