Posted Apr 20, 2019, 5:58 AM
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New Yorker for life
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Borough of Jersey
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/r...econd-act.html
Historic Bank Buildings Get a Second Act
New developments across the city are repurposing the opulent spaces where New Yorkers once deposited their savings.
By Stefanos Chen
April 19, 2019
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The fate of the soaring, palatial and utterly impractical Dime Savings Bank in Downtown Brooklyn was inevitable.
The 16,750-square-foot, 40-foot-tall chamber, with seven kinds of marble flooring, a vaulted-tile dome and Corinthian columns, closed in 2016, a victim of automated tellers and digital payments. Its last full-time tenant, Chase Bank, moved into a squat storefront across the street, about one-tenth the size.
The bank’s second act is more surprising: It will become part of Brooklyn’s tallest skyscraper, 9 DeKalb, a 1,066-foot luxury apartment building with retail at its base. The landmark Beaux-Arts interior will be transformed into a flagship store, and the roof will become an outdoor lounge with a pool that wraps around an ornate Guastavino dome. The marble and pink granite facade will be fused on one side to a slender glass-and-steel tower designed by SHoP Architects, which will have about 425 rentals and 150 condo apartments.
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The developer’s gain is clear in these projects, but what do the historic buildings get out of it? In the case of 9 DeKalb, where the Dime Savings Bank will merge with the borough’s first super-tall skyscraper, the bank will be restored, inside and out.
The developer, JDS, bought the bank and its air rights for $95 million in 2016. That gave the tower an additional 385,000 square feet of development rights, adding about 30 more floors. In exchange, the developer will repair damage to broken capitals and weathered friezes and preserve much of the landmark interior, restoring the hand-painted wallpaper in the upstairs ladies’ lounge, among other things.
The restoration has also uncovered some bank lore. In the subbasement, insulated by thick concrete, security guards used to shoot their weapons against a far wall for target practice, said Marci M. Clark, an architectural historian who is a director with JDS.
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On a recent morning, light poured into a subterranean vault that had not seen the sun since the early 20th century. The developer had torn down an accessory building on the lot to make way for the tower. One of the bank’s walls had been temporarily pinned, held up like a theater scrim, so the new building can be integrated behind it.
The new tower, which is expected to be completed in 2022, will be deferential to the landmark, but not derivative, said Gregg Pasquarelli, a principal at SHoP Architects, the designer. The hexagonal geometry of the building, seen in its ornate tile and coffered ceilings, will be echoed in the shape of the new structure.
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