Daily News from New York, New York • 121

Landmark list a 'What's What' in buildings By AL MIELE I i Streets of Manhattan p. Ft 11 wm i urn mm Here is another in our looks at the unusual stories behind the most average of New Yorkers. By BRIAN KATES IIS HANDS, white as vellum and thickly BILL TuRnBulL Dilt NEvVS Hi veined, work, with practiced precision: reach down, pick up a bottle, slip it into a George O'Barski: He can't forget that night. DN WHAT PROMISES to be a hectic meeting next month at City Hall, the Landmarks Preservation Commmission will hold hearings on proposed landmark status for the B. Altman Co.

and Lever House buildings, and add Luc how's Restaurant and the Apollo Theater to a list of 13 Manhattan properties under consideration. Reading like a list of Who's Who in valuable properties, the schedule for the April 13 commission hearing also includes the Helmsley Building exterior and lobby, the Level Club, Starrett-Lehigh Building, Salvation Army Territorial Headquarters, Odd Fellows Hall, Hearst Magazine Building, the former Tiffany Building and Pomander Walk. At previous meetings of the commission, opposition to landmark' status was voiced by some owners, including those of the Woolworth Building. Restaurateur Peter Aschkenasy recently announced that his famous Luchow's would move uptown in June to 51st St. and Broadway.

Aschkenasy said he hoped that "sane responsible actions" will be made by the commission. "If I were not responsible, I could have moved everything out in the middle of the night" he added. The 35-story Helmsley Building at 230 Park Ave. was completed in 1929 and is known for its high pyramidal roof which is studded with elaborate dormers and chimneys. The Level Club at 253 W.

73d St was built in 1926 and originally housed that Masonic organization. The exotic details and secret signs -and symbols on the structure are considered a unique and creative blend of neo-Romanesque and art deco styles. The Odd Fellows Hall at 165-171 Grand St features Italianate and Queen Anne architecture and was built in 1847. Luchow's Restaurant at 110 E. 14th St was founded in 1882 and became famous at the turn of the century as a restaurant and cafe serving New York's old theater district The Apollo Theater was built in 1913 and served from 1934 until the mid-'70s as the centerpiece of Harlem nightlife.

Located at 153 W. 125th the facade of the theater is considered a iine example of turn-of-the-cent-ury commercial theater design. The Woolworth Building at 233 Broadway, Manhattan, is considered one of the city's and country's major architectural monuments. Designed by Cass Gilbert and completed in 1913 for F.W. Woolworth.

Lever House at 390 Park Ave. was built in 1952 and was the first American commercial venture in the international style with its i gleaming metal and glass sheathing. The former Tiffany Building was built in 1906 and was modeled after the Palazzo Grima-ni in Venice. Located at 409 Fifth the massive marble structure was one of the first department stores to open in the midtown area. B.

Altman St Co. at 355-371 Fifth one of the flagship department stores of the famous avenue, was designed in the neo-Italian Renaissance style and was completed in 1906. Pomander Walk, a residential enclave on Manhattan's upper West Side on 94th and 95th was designed in 1921 to match stage sets in the play Pomander Walk. Throughout its existence, the neo-Tudor complex has served as the home for numerous writers, actors and o.ther artists. You can think I'm crazy I've considered that possibility.

But I know what I saw thin brown bag. Twist Slide it across the narrow black counter. Sweep the counter of change with one hand into the waiting palm of the other. Drop the money into the till. It is movement choreographed by George O'Barski over nearly half a century in the same dingy liquor store at 16th St and Eighth Ave.

Customers trail in one after the other on a payday Friday, mumbling requests for pints of Majorska vodka and Gallo port, half pints of Boca Chica rum and Thunderbird, tiny airline bottles of Seagram's, never a fifth of anything. O'Barski, a knit black watchman's cap pulled over the remaining strands of white hair and wearing, perpetually it seems, the same plaid flannel shirt buttoned at the collar, old black suit pants secured with a safety pin and a worn black cardigan sweater, serves their urgent need, barely taking notice of them. It is always the same. His mind is on his conversation, which is directed at others. The rest is merely mechanical.

Politics, the weather, off-track betting, you name it O'Barski, who is 82, finds virtually no topic unworthy of his attention. He speaks with authority, breaking myths and perpetuating others with equal acumen. It is the reflective talk of a man who knows he has lived most of his life, of a man who has more to look back on than forward to, who, after more than four-score years, is trying to make sense of it all. And lately, he is increasingly concerned about something that happened to him about seven years -ago. He still hasn't figured out what it means.

He. about it only rarely and then only to people he trusts. Basically, the, source, of his confusion is this: George O'Barski believes he witnessed a visitation from outer space. Don't laugh. George O'Barski is one of many.

So common is this experience that a prominent East Side psychologist Dr. Aphrodite Clamar, devotes a sizable portion of her practice to dealing with people who believe they have seen, or even been abducted by, beings from another world. No kidding. And, anyway, a great many strange things have happened, to O'Barski in his long life, a life that began when McKinley was president In 1937, a child threw a firecracker in his face and blinded him. The Daily News reported the incident O'Barski went about life without sight for two years.

Then, two years later, without so much as a doctor's intervention, his sight suddenly came back to him. "Can't explain it" O'Barski says, twisting the top on a brown paper bag. "I was blind, then I could see. Just like that" Then, more recently, doctors told O'Barski he'd have to have surgery to remove a cancer. He'd live a month or so.

He had the operation. That was 12 years ago. "I guess you could say Tve had a lot of things happen to me that are hard to explain," he says. 'That's how he "views that strange pre-dawn November morning in 1975: as something hard to Continued on page 3.