Landmarks requested developer consider reducing proposal impacting buildings adjacent to the Whitney Museum. On October 18, 2011, Landmarks considered Daniel E. Straus’s proposal to alter and redevelop eight buildings adjacent to the Whitney Museum along Madison Avenue and East 74th Street in the Upper East Side Historic District. The site includes six rowhouses at 933 to 943 Madison Avenue and two townhouses at 31 and 33 East 74th Street. Straus purchased the buildings from the Whitney in 2010. The museum in 2005 and 2006 had obtained approvals from Landmarks and the Board of Standards & Appeals for an expansion plan that included building a Renzo Pianodesigned 178-foot tower behind the facades of the rowhouses on Madison Avenue. 3 CityLand 122 (Sept. 15, 2006). The Whitney, however, abandoned the project and instead decided to build a new museum facility in the Meatpacking District.

Architect Richard Metsky, from Beyer Blinder Belle, presented Straus’s plan. Straus planned to replace the heavily altered rowhouse abutting the Whitney at 943 Madison Avenue with a new infill building. A visible two-story addition would be built on top of the remaining five rowhouses along Madison Avenue, and the facades of the rowhouses would be restored. Straus would demolish a one-story infill building behind 933 Madison Avenue and a rear extension of 31 East 74th Street and build a nine-story residential building that would be set back 25 feet from East 74th Street. A one-story set-back rooftop addition would be added to 33 East 74th Street. The addition and new building would be clad in terra cotta to match the Madison Avenue rowhouses. Metsky said the neutral palette would not distract from the historic district and would become part of the background.

Valerie Campbell, Straus’s attorney, noted that while the project’s residential uses would be permitted as of right, Straus would need BSA variances to build the project.  (more…)

Image: Courtesy of Morris Adjmi Architects

Project approved after height was further reduced by eight feet. On July 19, 2011, Landmarks approved Taconic Investment Partners’ revised proposal to build a four-story addition above a low-rise Moderne-style building across the street from the High Line at 837 Washington Street in the Gansevoort Market Historic District. Taconic first proposed a seven-story addition in November 2010, which it then reduced and resubmitted to Landmarks in April of 2011. The Commissioners generally praised the Morris Adjmi-designed torqued glass and steel tower, but expressed reservations about approving such a large and visible addition to a contributing building in a historic district. 8 CityLand 62 (May 15, 2011).

At a June meeting, Taconic presented a plan nearly identical in design to the previous iteration, but with floor heights reduced to create a building eight feet shorter than the prior proposal. Architectural consultant Bill Higgins explained that the vertical steel beams would now be visible through the storefronts of the existing building, which demonstrated the interplay between the new addition and existing building.  (more…)

Comedy club to move into converted slaughterhouse. The Board of Standards & Appeals approved a use variance application allowing a comedy club to move into 351 West 14th Street at the intersection of Hudson Street in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Currently, a four-story, 24- unit apartment building with vacant street retail space occupies the site. The comedy club will move into the vacant 7,915-square-foot retail space and increase its mezzanine by 1,345 sq.ft.

The project site, a lot of 206 feet in depth, is split between two different zoning districts, one residential and one commercial. The proposed comedy club (an eating and drinking establishment) could locate legally in the front 103 feet of the building, which is commercially zoned, but would be an illegal use in the rear 47 ft. of the building, zoned R8B, hence the need for the variance. (more…)