Bob Guccione's former mansion on the Upper East Side is about to get a lot less porntastic. The 27-room townhouse that the Penthouse founder once decorated with neo-Classical female busts, Byzantine style fountains, and a Roman-inspired indoor pool (left!) was seized by creditors after his business empire went bust a few years back, and was purchased by hedge funder Phil Falcone and his wife Lisa Maria for $49 million in 2008. Now some big changes are on the way. Falcone's petition to dramatically renovate the home, demolish much of the interior, and scrap Guccione's treasured pool was approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission yesterday, which means another vestige of NYC's filthy past will soon be history. A moment of silence, please! [Curbed, previously]

Tribeca colonist Robert De Niro testified before the Landmarks Preservation Commission yesterday in a bid to save the penthouse of his Greenwich Hotel—which has come under fire for being bigger, more unwieldy, and all-around less Tribeca-like than the one he'd said he would build—from the wrecking ball. "If there are any minor little mistakes, my apologies for it," Bobby told the Commission at a public hearing as he sought retroactive approval for the amped-up penthouse. De Niro & Co. also enlisted a few boldfaced supporters to testify on his behalf, like fellow Tribeca resident Ed Burns, who spoke as though the 88-room lodging (with rooms starting at $525 a night) were an aesthetic achievement on the scale Bruneschelli's Dome: "The building is beautiful and, for me as a layperson, architecturally beautiful." If the Landmarks Commission ultimately rules in De Niro's favor, maybe he'll treat its members to a free dinner at the hotel's restaurant, Ago—although that might be more of a punishment than a reward, come to think of it.

Were you planning on booking the 2,500-square-foot penthouse with 1,700-square-foot garden at Robert De Niro's Greenwich Hotel for a staycation? Act fast, because the Landmarks Preservation Commission might be tearing it down! Because the top floor is just too big! Not to side with rule-violating developers, but wouldn't the dismantling of this thing be more of a menace to the neighborhood than its mere continued existence?