With several landmarked buildings being gutted and converted into luxury condos, the Upper West Side can sometimes feel like a stage set created to resemble an old-style neighborhood.
The latest development to get the full gut-reno treatment are the townhouses at 272-276 West 86th street. Walk by and you’ll see the lovely facade, and behind it…nothing at all! The building has the very outermost skin of an old structure, but none of the interior remains. A crack in the construction shed revealed the rubble behind the facade (see the photo below).
Developers East River Partners gave the following description:
“ERP is renovating 272-276 West 86th Street – three adjacent landmarked grand mansions designed originally by the renowned architect C.P.H. Gilbert – into completely modernized apartment homes. Located in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the project matches the elegance of the neighborhood’s pre-war structures while offering apartments that are brighter and more updated than those found elsewhere. All of the apartments will feature more than three bedrooms, a rarity in today’s market.”
It seems like the entire point of landmarking the building was to allow people walking by to believe they’re still walking past an old building (the book Time and Again comes to mind), even it’s just the thinnest veneer.
Feel free to comment on this or other topics below.
Thanks to commenters on a recent open thread for pointing this out.
There seem to be a ton of buildings with vacant apartments, thus allowing landlords/developers to convert to luxury apartments.
How do landlords empty apartments so easily?
is there any data on vacant apartments?
I totally agree! It’s all a Facade! Sad, really! Seems like a great analogy for the UWS these days… Just skin deep and superficial! 🙁
“…the Upper West Side can sometimes feel like a stage set created to resemble a REAL neighborhood.”
Re: “Walk by and you’ll see the lovely facade, and behind it…nothing at all!”
So?? By keeping the “lovely facade” the developer is complying both with Landmark Preservation rules AND with the sensibilities of the neighborhood, as the beautiful exterior will remain (once the ugly construction stuff is gone) and WILL NOT BE REPLACED BY ANOTHER GLASS-n-ALUMINUM CRACKER BOX.
As for the fact that the inside will house “luxury apartments”?
Oh, the horror! Let’s have SRO’s instead, eh! Then we can all complain about how “greedy landlords” have destroyed the block by “bringing undesirables into that building” and allow us to satisfy our collective UWS need-to-kvetch.
Exactly! By the way, there is a pretty bad SRO just around the corner (Broadway bet. 85 & 86). Residents hanging out on the street in their underwear etc.
Kudos to any developer who thoughtfully and beautifully adds RE to the neighborhood.
Thank you scooterstan! Took the words right out of mouth.
ScooterStan, I think I need to buy you a drink one of these days. You always manage to either make me laugh or read my mind. Sometimes both!
I can understand the sentiment of the article, that building an entirely new structure and placing an old facade in front may make the “old” nature of the building feel phony in some regard. But no matter how charming we find it to walk through a landmarked district and think of how timeless the neighborhood feels, to some extent we are always deluding ourselves – The neighborhood was probably never as charming as we imagine it in our minds and we cannot pretend that 100-years hasn’t passed since many of these buildings were put-up.
I agree with the commentators above, that the concern of this article is overstated. I frequently walk around the City and wonder why new buildings aren’t built with the scale and attention to detail that older structures had (For example, I find the oversized doors used to adorn luxury towers utterly narcissistic and out of human-scale). This seems like a pretty reasonable compromise given architects today do not appear to embrace the older style on new buildings. There’s a much greater chance this facade will be standing in another hundred years because of this construction; isn’t that what we see and isn’t that what matters?
By re-building the structure of this building, it can have modern plumbing, electrical-work, larger windows, and generally be up to modern safety standards. I also imagine it will be easier to control vermin, have better elevators, and have safer stairwells. It may also be fire-proofed. It’s a good thing that these will be larger apartments that are fit for families and folks who will stay in the neighborhood.
I live in a 100-year old building and I love it. It’s got loads of charm – But the elevator is creeky, the basement is downright scary, the plumbing is ancient, and the electrical is old old old. Life is about compromise and the above renovation seems like a pretty decent one.
I truly hate all the ugly new buildings and I prefer they keep the facade- even if they build up. At least people passing by still have their sense see something beauttiful.
Sorry to rant, but I have one more thing to add –
A recent article featured CNN from Daniel Libeskind was a good reach about architecture – In it he speaks of the purpose of architecture to build a structure that “moves” you.
I was reminded of this when I thought of this article – There is a reason we are all drawn to the Upper West Side. For me it is how you can walk around and feel history, you can imagine those who lived here before you and their stories, you can admire structures that were built and were so beautiful that they are still being perfected a hundred years on. . .
By that measure, what does it matter if the building’s facade is old while the structure is new? Honestly, it is the facade that “moves” me and it is the facade that I will continue to walk past and that will move my imagination, that will make me respect history and admire our unique heritage in NY and to respect this neighborhood.
An old facade on a new building does that much more to preserve that heritage than, for example, a brash glassy tower that, by the same measure, communicates a modern obsession with “shiny objects” and a rejection of that same history.
This so much better than the alternative – that is, losing architectural gems completely. I love it. I wish they would build a “stage set” facade to cover up my own ugly building!
Building in this way — leaving an historic, “classy” facade but building an otherwise typically ugly modernistic structure behind and above it — is fairly common, if not typical, in Washington DC. It allows an old city to be renewed and enlarged while maintaining some of the charm of an earlier time.
This was done with some skill and a nice result in NYC at the Hearst Tower at Columbus Circle.
Would it be nicer to leave the old school charm alone? Maybe, but that’s not going to happen. So if there have to be ugly modernistic towers, there’s some satisfaction to be found in the compromise of leaving the charming old facades.
“Time and Again”…
I read it 20+ years ago and one thing only stands out (though it’s a great book): the “real-ness” of NYC to which the narrator travels. Ruddy complexions. The sense that people were eating farm-to-table food. Personal interaction. Cigar smoke.
Facades like ERP’s are the antithesis of this new New York, replacing that which even I glimpsed as a kid with its subway fans overhead–unprotected wood blades circulating the humidity we swam in each day.
Great Book!!!!
I wish someone would do this or something like this or anything at all to the Metro Theater at 2626 Broadway. At this point, even a wrecking ball might be an improvement.