New Old Tribeca

Many projects have convoluted histories. 124 Hudson Street, a new condominium in the historic New York City neighborhood of Tribeca, is no exception, having the distinction of being designed by two different firms under two different owners. After more than a year of planning, and after the working drawings were complete, the first developer sold the site to another developer, who took the plans with him to a new architectural firm.

The first firm, New York City-based DeWitt Tishman Architects LLP, was hired in 1998 to design the luxury condominium in place of a parking lot. The first task was to change the zoning for the site. “It was quite a process dealing with community boards and the City Planning Commission,” says Peter DeWitt, a partner at the firm. “But it was minor compared to our next hurdle.”

124 Hudson Street is located in the city’s first residential neighborhood and an historic district that showcases many mid-19th- and early-20th-century buildings, and thus required approval of the Landmarks Preservation Com-mission. The process took about a year. “We drew up a number of drafts, going back and forth between the owner and the Commis-sion,” explains DeWitt. “While the owner had requested setbacks in order to create private terraces, it became clear that the architects on the Commission wouldn’t allow that.”

As a solution, DeWitt Tishman created setbacks at the seventh and ninth levels on the west, Hudson Street façade and the eighth and ninth levels on the north, Erickson Place façade. “With this massing, the building mediated between the taller buildings to the east on Erickson Place and the shorter building to the south on the corner of Hudson Street,” says DeWitt. “It was great that we got to keep some setbacks, because the apparent bulk of the building is reduced. Also, some of the apartments can have terraces.”

Other than the massing, the façade materials were of great concern to the Landmarks Commission. DeWitt Tishman specified materials that were complementary to Romanesque Revival structures of the 1880s and ’90s. These buildings, which emphasize brick façades and stone and cast-iron trim, are prevalent in the area and today make up many of the renovated residential lofts.

DeWitt Tishman used brick and cast stone in its design. “We chose Norman-sized brick in a variety of red and orange shades,” says DeWitt. “Though Norman-sized brick is not necessarily specific to buildings in the area, it is more cost-effective than modular-sized brick. The Commission approved it, because the height is the same as the traditional brick.” Projecting cast-stone elements were used as well.

The window patterns were also influenced by the Romanesque Revival buildings, specifically the S.A. Bendheim Building, located directly south of the new project. “The over-scaled double-hung windows in groupings of three refer directly to the [Bendheim Building],” DeWitt says.

Painted-steel canopies were designed to hang above the storefronts that would line Hudson Street and Erickson Place. “These recall the canopies on the old Tribeca warehouses,” says DeWitt. “Their addition was integral to the Landmarks Commission’s approval.”

After the working drawings were complete and the approval from the Landmarks Commission had been obtained, in 1999, the site’s owner sold the property, along with DeWitt Tishman’s plans. BKSK Architects, LLP, another New York City firm, was hired to take over the project.

BKSK kept most of the massing of the building, but changed the façade detailing, among other things. “Much of the legwork for the building’s bulk was completed by DeWitt Tishman,” says Todd Poisson, associate-in-charge at BKSK. “The firm had already acquired Landmarks authorization, so when we took the project over, we designed the façade detailing to remain within the achieved Landmarks certificate of appropriateness. At the same time, we pushed it further to accentuate certain ideas of verticality, and distinguished between the building’s prominent north and less prominent west façades.”

The condominium is an amalgamation of traditional materials, some consistent with DeWitt Tishman’s plans, including highly articulated iron-spot brickwork and suspended canopies, and some from BKSK, including painted mahogany weight-and-chain windows and articulated brick chimneys. The north façade of the building features “giant-order piers constructed of Desert Iron Spot Norman-sized brick laid in 1/3 running bond,” says Poisson. “They are corbelled in plan for vertical emphasis and topped with rough-hewn granite capitals.” He adds, “The brick was wire-cut, thus textured, and plays with the light beautifully.” Instead of red- and orange-colored brick, BKSK used brick in colors that range from light buff to deep ochre. “We felt that these colors offered another reference to the old cold-storage warehouses that once lined the streets – now turned into lofts,” he says.

Poisson iterates the building’s placement on the block and within the neighborhood. “The building plays a supportive role on the street and creates a full-block composition with its western façade,” he says, “while the north face alludes to the warehouses with its grand façade and giant orders.

“It was also informed, as Peter DeWitt pointed out, by the historic S.A. Bendheim Building located to the south with similar materials, entablature and cornice heights, as well as a sense of an upper ‘loggia floor.’” An historic brick building across the street designed by Francis Kimball informed BKSK’s design of the detailing and metalwork on the façade, which included fanciful lintels and corner guards, the base ironwork and the steel tieback plates.

DeWitt Tishman had designed a poured-in-place concrete structure, but due to economics, pre-cast plank was specified. With this change, the span restrictions changed as well. “Where the poured-in-place concrete building had columns, we now had to build bearing walls,” says Poisson. “There was less freedom in the new plan, but we were able to maximize flexibility by pushing the pre-cast plank system to accommodate an atypical plan.” To address the irregularly shaped plan with many large penetrations for fireplace flues, mechanical shafts and the building core, BKSK combined differently sized standard planks. Also, plank edges were shaved back at an angle to account for the angled edge of the typical floor plate at the Hudson Street façade, which allow the corner bays to project slightly without overstepping the street property line.

The spandrels between the piers are cast fiberglass instead of the brick specified by DeWitt Tishman. “We used an historic pattern from a building in Brooklyn,” says Poisson. “W.F. Norman Corp. [of Nevada, MO] provided the original stamped-metal pattern and Seal Reinforced Fiberglass [of Copaigue, NY] doubled it and manufactured the fiberglass replicas.”

Another deviation from DeWitt Tishman’s design was the interior. “The ground floor changed and instead of a mezzanine level with windows, we put the super’s apartment partly below grade with views to the rear courtyard, increasing the retail space’s footprint above,” says Poisson. The biggest difference was the expansion of a penthouse on the ninth level.

The nine-story, 92,000-sq.ft. building houses 27 apartments. There are four units per floor on levels two through six, three units on the seventh floor, two units on level eight and only the penthouse on level nine. Features include 101/3-ft.-tall ceilings, wood-burning fireplaces, tongue-and-groove hardwood strip flooring and stone slab bathrooms and kitchens. Modern amenities include up-to-date bathroom and kitchen features, 21st-century cabling and wiring and independently controlled central air.

Incorporating some of the modern technology was a challenge, though, because the Landmarks Commission mandated that no mechanical equipment could be visible from the street or from the courtyard in the rear. The architects’ solution was to design a field of rooftop equipment “that is acoustically separated from the apartments below through special ceiling assemblies,” says Poisson. “The 30-odd condensers are shielded from street view by the top setback’s parapets designed specifically for this purpose.”

Another rooftop challenge was dealing with structural and waterproofing issues brought on by the penthouse terraces. “The setbacks created generous terraces at the top three floors’ large penthouse apartments,” says Poisson. “However, we paid extra attention to the detailing and installation of protected membrane roofing under the private terraces’ pavers so that water would not collect on the terraces and leak into the apartments.”

Another challenge BKSK faced was the location of the site with regard to noise and air pollution. Because the building occupies a once long-vacant site facing the Holland Tunnel, industrial-scale, sound-insulating windows custom manufactured by Just Wood Industries, Inc., of Mercersburg, PA, were installed throughout the building. These painted-mahogany, double-hung, weight-and-chain windows, measuring 7 ft. tall x 10 ft. wide, keep out the noise, while taking full advantage of the city views. The top penthouse even has views of the Hudson River to the west.

Not only have residents and passers-by complemented 124 Hudson Street, the Landmarks Preservation Commission viewed it as being sensitive to neighboring buildings. As of late 2004, it was fully occupied. BKSK Architects has its foot in the neighborhood and is now renovating and creating an addition to an historic five-story building down the street. DeWitt Tishman has since completed several large apartment buildings on the Hudson River waterfront in New Jersey. – Hadiya Strasberg

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Last Updated February 15, 2008