Coming: 2 Commercial (Wink) Buildings

 by Barry Owens


One building is named for a former soap manufacturer, the other for a 19th Century concern that cultivated enzymes.

But from the moment that architect Joseph Pell Lombardi propped up the renderings on an easel in the Community Board 1 meeting room, it was plain to see that the developers of a pair of "manufacturing" buildings in northern Tribeca have much loftier intentions than their building's names let on.

Architect Joseph Lombardi presents 414 (top) and 415 Washington Streets to CB1. Photo: Carl Glassman

The first clue is the terraces.

"Needless to say," Lombardi told the Landmarks Committee of the board last month, "the hope is that new zoning will allow the buildings to be converted to lofts."

The buildings, proposed for what are now parking lots on opposite sides of Washington Street between Laight and Vestry Streets, are red brick boxes with tall windows, each standing just under 110-feet high. They could certainly pass for manufacturing buildings.

"The nicest manufacturing buildings built in the last 100 years," cracked board member Rick Landman.

The buildings, the "Pearline Atalier" at 414 Washington St., named for the soap manufacturer once housed on the lot, and the Fairchild and Foster Atalier, named for the enzyme company that had a building at 415 Washington St., are to be apartments, 38 in all, ranging in size from 1,200 to 3,500 square feet with asking prices from $1.5 to $4 million, Lombardi told the Trib.

North Tribeca is currently zoned as a manufacturing district and developers who want to build residential housing there must apply for a zoning variance, a costly and time-consuming process. City planners are working on a proposal to rezone the neighborhood as a commercial district, allowing for residential development without special permission from the city.


Lombardi said the building's developers, who he named as Domain Real Estate of Brooklyn, hope to know that new zoning will be going through by the spring, "before the shovel gets put in the ground."

Because the buildings are proposed for an historic district, they need the approval of the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission. Lombardi last month won advisory approval from the community board's Landmarks Committee, though there was concern that the many large terrace-like set backs that stair step down the building's façades were out of character in the neighborhood.

"In a historic district that is zoned commercial, having terraces and 12-foot ceilings is highly unusual," said committee chairman Roger Byrom.

"We didn't want to build an industrial block of a building and say 'Okay, we've built a 20th century warehouse," Lombardi said of the set back style he described as "spiraling."

Nor, it should be noted, do the developers want to be in the commercial building business. Should the area not be rezoned for residential use afterall, Lombardi said, there was a good chance "the project wouldn't advance."

Lombardi is the restoration architect of several buildings in Tribeca historic districts, named for their original uses: the Ice House, the Mohawk (Electric) Atalier, the United States Sugar Building and the Juilliard Building.