CB1 Slams 'Gigantic' Addition Proposed for 200-Year-Old Tribeca Buildings

Left: 385 Greenwich Street, which wraps around to North Moore and the smaller 71 North Moore next door. The floors of the two buildings are connected. Right: Rendering of the proposed project, with stucco removed and brickwork exposed and repaired, new ground floor and storefronts, and penthouse addition. Photo and rendering by DXA Studio 

A proposed glassy penthouse addition to two small but prominent adjoined buildings in the Tribeca West Historic District received an emphatic thumbs down by Community Board 1 on Tuesday. 

The buildings, 385 Greenwich Street and 71 North Moore Street, are four and three stories respectively and date back to the early 19th century. The new owner of the properties is proposing a major renovation of the buildings that will include removing its stucco skin to expose and restore the brick facade. The base of the combined buildings, now housing the restaurant Yves and bar Smith & Mills, would be completely redone, with a sliced-off canted corner for the commercial entrance and residential entrance on the North Moore Street side.

CB1 took issue with a number of proposed design features but it was the “gigantic” fifth-floor penthouse, with its “out-of-scale” windows and bulk that the board, which is advisory to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, especially targeted in its negative resolution.

“All parts” of the proposal should be redesigned, the resolution concluded, “such that the building at the very least remains a four-story building.”

The project is expected to go before the Landmarks Preservation Commission in March.

In their presentation to CB1’s Landmarks and Preservation Committee, the project’s architect and its historic preservation consultant sought to liken the “contemporary” addition to others in the historic district that have been granted approvals by the commission.

“The district has continued to change,” said the consultant, Cass Stachelberg of Higgins Quasebarth & Partners. “The commission has acknowledged the value of contemporary design as well as a way to keep the district alive and also maintain a quality and scale of the historic buildings. So that balance is something that we are pursuing.”

All that remains of the buildings’ “historic fabric,” Stachelberg said, is a cast iron column on the corner and a 40-foot length of cornice. 

“We think this project, given the condition of the building, has set up an opportunity to sort of approach this project perhaps a little bit differently than a building that’s largely intact with all of its historic fabric exposed,” noted the project’s architect, Wayne Norbeck of DXA Studio.

But that approach did not sit well with the committee, whose co-chair, Vicky Cameron, called the glass addition “hideous” and “heavy and out of character.” For Jared Sheer, the design is “more extreme than virtually everything else in the neighborhood that’s visible from the street.” 

“I like how you’re trying to do something different and trying to tie in some contemporary look,” said Vera Sung, “but from my point of view, you have a very delicate building beneath and you’re throwing something so heavy on top. It just feels overbearing.”

“We will look at taking all of their thoughtful recommendations into consideration,” DXA Studio co-founder Jordan Rogove said Wednesday in a phone interview. He added, “I don’t think the resolution moves the needle too much that we don’t still want to go in front of Landmarks. If we’re successful, that’s great. If we’re not, then we can aggregate [the commission’s] comments and any comments that we haven’t addressed from the community board and do an even more significant re-look at it.”