Image Credit: BKSK

Modifications to proposal for eight-story-plus-penthouse structure included revisions to cornice and base, and lowering some floor heights. On September 6, 2016, the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the demolition of an existing building and a new development at 466 Columbus Avenue in the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District. The approved plan will replace an existing structure built in 1894 but heavily altered in intervening years. The site is owned and will be developed by the Roe Corporation.

At an initial hearing, held on July 19, 2016, the applicants attested that the existing building had been heavily compromised to accommodate different uses including the addition of a third story approved by Landmarks in 2006. The applicants proposed a building with an eight-story streetwall primarily composed of brick and terra cotta, consistent with the district’s traditional masonry, with a painted metal storefront. The seventh floor would be topped with brick corbelling, with the eighth floor set back from the street facade. A metal cornice would project from above the eighth floor. A setback duplex penthouse would be only partially visible from certain oblique public perspectives. (read more…)

Architect’s rendering of the site as it appears now (left), and of the site with the planned development (right). Image credit: LPC

Plan that will replace heavily altered three-story 1894 structure close to being approved; Commissioners asked to see some revisions. On July 19, 2016, Landmarks considered a proposal to redevelop a lot at 466 Columbus Avenue in the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District.  The site is occupied by a commercial building constructed in 1894. The building was altered in 1961, and a third story added. Further alterations designed by Gruzen Samton were approved by Landmarks in 2006. The applicants proposed to demolish the existing building and erect a new residential structure with a commercial base. The Roe Corporation owns the site and will be the developers.

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Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School was permitted to expand its campus to provide a middle school. Image credit: Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School

Columbia Grammar and Preparatory permitted to establish new building for a middle-school program over community opposition. On October 7, 2014 the Board of Standards and Appeals voted to grant a variance to Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School for the enlargement of an existing school building. The building is located at 5 West 93rd Street in Manhattan’s Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District, between Central Park West to the west and Columbus Avenue to the east. Columbia Prep serves students from pre-kindergarten through the twelfth grade grouped in two schools, Pre-K through six, and seven through twelve.

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Rendering of the proposed two-story addition at 101 West 78th Street, Manhattan. Image Credit: Montroy Andersen DeMarco.

Applicants testified that seven-story building was originally conceived as rising to nine stories, and that a two-story addition was approved in the 1890s. The Landmarks Preservation Commission considered an application to construct a two-story plus bulkhead addition atop the Evelyn, an apartment building at 101 West 78th Street in the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District, on July 23, 2013.  The 1886 seven-story Renaissance Revival apartment building stands at the corner of Columbus Avenue, across the street from the American Museum of Natural History. The proposal also included the installation of an access lift at the main residential entrance, which would necessitate the removal of some historic fabric.

The proposed addition would be clad in zinc, while a brick bulkhead would rise an additional story. Glass railings would surround the accessible rooftop areas. Portions of the addition would be visible from multiple viewpoints from public thoroughfares.

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Illegal fifth-floor addition will be removed. Credit: Mary Gillen

Owners will demolish illegal addition, restore original conditions, and build a smaller addition. On March 20, 2012 after several years of back and forth with the building owners, Landmarks approved a proposal to build a new addition on a secondary structure at 12-14 West 68th Street in the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District. The proposal includes the demolition of an illegal, fifth-floor addition built by the former owner of the building without Landmarks approval. The owner added the 500-square-foot addition to a 1925 studio building attached to the rear of a 1895 Queen Anne-style mansion. The owner tried to legalize the addition in June 2009, claiming that the property’s landmark status did not appear in the Department of Buildings’ Building Information System (BIS) database when filing for permits in September 2005. Landmarks, however, refused, finding that the addition made the rear building inappropriately taller than the main mansion. (See CityLand’s coverage here and here).

The property was sold, and the new owner attempted to legalize the addition in March 2010. The proposal’s architect, Herbert Weber of the Stephen B. Jacobs Group, testified that the addition’s height would be reduced by seven feet, and its windows and facade materials would be changed to replicate the rear building’s lower floors. Landmarks again (read more…)

New owners proposed to modify fifth-floor addition previously denied by Landmarks. On March 16, 2010, Landmarks voted to deny a proposal to modify and legalize a one-story rooftop addition built without Landmarks’ approval at 12-14 West 68th Street in the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District. The building’s previous owners, Thomas Haines and Polly Cleveland, built the 506 square-foot, fifth-floor addition on top of a 1925-era studio building added to the rear of a Queen Anne-style mansion built in 1895.

Haines and Cleveland applied to Landmarks to legalize the addition. At an April 2009 hearing, architect Lester Evan Tour testified that he did not intend to bypass Landmarks when designing the addition. Evan Tour claimed that Buildings had failed to flag the property as landmarked, and that the plan examiners also missed the oversight. He argued that the addition was only minimally visible from the street and it related well to its host building and surroundings. Landmarks voted unanimously to deny legalization in June 2009. According to the Commissioners, the addition was too tall and made the rear building inappropriately higher than the main house. 6 CityLand 92 (July 15, 2009). (read more…)