Redesigning a Building to Preserve Peace in the Neighborhood
The original plan.
Above, Norman Foster’s new
design for expanding the Parke-
Bernet Gallery building.
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Published: May 14, 2008
You have to pity any architect who appears before the landmarks committee of the Upper East Side’s community board. Packed with amateur preservationists, it is notoriously adverse to anything new.
Two years ago, an effort to preserve two nondescript brownstone facades forced the Whitney Museum of American Art to drastically revise a plan to expand its Madison Avenue home; ultimately that project was scuttled. The group seems as open to the notion that cities can change as some biblical fundamentalists are to evolution.
The recent battle over the Parke-Bernet Gallery building, an austere 1950s-era limestone structure on Madison Avenue between 76th and 77th Streets, is a case in point. When the British architect Norman Foster first presented his proposal to erect a 30-story glass tower atop the existing building, many neighborhood residents were outraged. “A glass dagger plunged into the heart of the Upper East Side,” one said.
The project’s developer, Aby Rosen, sent Mr. Foster back to the drawing board, and he has returned with a plan, one that both hope will be more palatable to neighborhood preservationists. Clad in elegant bronze bands, its low blocky form would rest directly on the existing structure, echoing its exact proportions. More important, perhaps, it would be far less visible from the multimillion-dollar penthouse apartments just across the street.
Should the plan be approved, it would only underscore the bizarre thinking behind decisions governing historic landmark cases today. Both proposals would have significantly changed the building; both are thoughtful attempts to fuse old and new without compromising either.
But the new design is more polite and less original, hewing to the reactionary view that most contemporary architecture is best when it is invisible. Little wonder that this neighborhood has not gained a significant new work of architecture in more than a quarter-century.
Planting modern appendages on top of old buildings is an unnerving trend these days in Manhattan real estate, where soaring prices can make any empty space look like a money-making opportunity. Just two years ago Mr. Foster completed a faceted glass-and-steel tower that pierces the core of the 1928 Hearst Building, a low limestone structure that looked a bit like a mausoleum, anyway. And plans are in the works for a 40-story office tower atop the Port Authority bus terminal and a 140-room hotel on the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan.
But the Parke-Bernet building has neither the charm nor the civic stature of the Beaux-Arts Maritime Building. With five floors of commercial offices and art galleries, its austere form, punctured by a single row of windows at the sixth floor, is a subdued interpretation of the hard-edged architecture of Rockefeller Center — minus the glamour. As architecture, it does have a subtle impact on its surroundings, offering a pleasing contrast to the early-19th-century brick structures on either side.
In his original proposal Mr. Foster sought to strengthen those contrasts rather than smooth them over. Only the elevator core would have penetrated the existing building; the rest of the tower would have seemed to float just above the building’s northern end, barely touching it. Its oval floors would have housed luxury apartments with 360-degree views. The building’s old roof, meanwhile, would have been transformed into a luxurious roof garden.
By comparison with the Hearst Tower’s faceted exterior, the Parke-Bernet project’s oval form seemed rather slick and subdued. Still, the idea — held by most serious architects today — was that the best way to respect the past is not to mimic it, but to weave a contemporary vision into the historic fabric with sensitivity.
The delicate bronze bands are in strong contrast to the building’s heavy stone base. A six-foot gap separates the two; just below it, the parapet of the old building hides a series of narrow terraces that wrap around the building on three sides. It’s a wonderful sectional detail, with the two forms literally interlocking in a double-height living space.
The new version suggests an excessive desire not to offend. The taut bronze bands immediately bring to mind Herzog & de Meuron’s haunting 1994 railway Signal Box in Basel, Switzerland, a classic of contemporary architecture. Yet that work, flanked by rows of rail tracks, radiates a terrifying energy, as if it were charged with electricity. Foster’s design, by contrast, radiates luxury, not mystery. The bands, modeled on an earlier Foster design for an apartment complex in an Alpine resort, are conceived as delicate movable screens, reflecting the good taste of the inhabitants while protecting them from the unwanted gaze of outsiders.
The real question here is not so much which of Foster’s designs is better; it’s why he has to strain for a more palatable alternative to the first. Both significantly alter the existing structure; both add roughly the same amount of space. What separates the two is not a newfound sensitivity to the preservationist’s perspective, but a calculated response to the bottom-line politics of building on the Upper East Side. The building’s low profile and bronzed exterior, while no more contextual than a glass tower, seem well mannered if complacent. By lowering the height of his building, Mr. Rosen is no longer required to get a zoning variance; as long as the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission signs off, there is no legal impediment to construction.
Perhaps more important, however, the new design would not affect the views of the handful of wealthy and potentially litigious apartment owners across the street. Nowadays that seems to be a more critical issue for the Landmarks Preservation Commission than what the rest of us will experience on the street.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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and while it won't be as prominent in the views people living in high-rises have, it'll probably put the street in more shadow - typical nimby complaint about shadows seem to be less iiimportant than "my" view. Nimbys showing what they're all about: me, me, me.
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