An article in yesterday's on-line edition of The Architect's Newspaper said that some commissioners of the Landmarks Preservation Commission "expressed shock and surprise" when presented December 16, 2008 with the latest design by St. Vincent's Hospital for a building to replace Albert Ledner's nautically styled National Maritime Union Building on the west side of Seventh Avenue between 12th and 13th Street.
The hospital has entered an agreement with Rudin Management to redevelop its properties with residential condominiums by converting some existing buildings and erecting some new ones so that the hospital can erect a new facility on the site of the Ledner building, which is now known as the Edward and Theresa O'Toole Medical Services Building.
The commission voted in October 6 to 4 to grant the hospital permission to demolish the Ledner building, which is notable for its scalloped edges on the grounds of hardship but it asked the hospital to continue to explore other design options.
The article by Matt Chaban article was accompanied by a rendering, shown here, of a rectilinear tower designed by Ian Bader of Pei Cobb Freed as an "alternative" to the previously submitted designed with a broad curved "lenticular" facade facing south.
The article quoted commissioner Stephen Byrns as stating that "For the better part of a year, we've been looking at this project, and I think it is as inappropriate as when we started," adding "I cannot even begin to comment on the architecture given its out-of-scale bulk."
The lenticular design would lower the height of the planned tower of about 300 feet by about 36 feet.
Commissioner Margery Perlmutter said, according to the article, that "It's a little bit frustrating when every time we ask for alternatives, we get an off-handed response that lacks the quality, details, and attention of the original proposal," she said. The article said she endorsed a proposal put forward by Byrns that would either bridge or build over a section of West 12th Street, thus allowing the hospital to incorporate a 15,000-square-foot triangular lot that is planned to serve as a loading dock, but the developer said that between the complexity of demapping the street and the parameters of making the hospital function properly, such an approach would be nearly impossible.
The article said that "several commissioners said that the alternative proposal obviously did not work, and that they favored the lenticular design" and added that "perhaps most importantly, commission chair Robert Tierney seems to support the lenticular plan, as well."
The Rudin Organization has also promised to convert part of a property nearby as a neighborhood public school for the community as part of the protracted controversy over the hospital's expansion.
Last May, the commission informally but definitely told St. Vincent's to go back to the drawing board because its plan to demolish O'Toole to build a 325-foot-tall new hospital on the west side of Seventh Ave. at 11th St. would not be appropriate for the historic district. The hospital came back two weeks later with the proposed hospital tower reduced to 299 feet tall and a residential tower on the east side of Seventh Ave. to be built by the Rudin Organization reduced from 265 feet tall to 200 feet.
At a meeting in June, Frederic Schwartz, an architect noted for imaginative urban schemes, announced that he was collaborating with Mr. Ledner to preserve the O'Toole building as the base for a new hospital tower structure that would be a "twin intersecting circular glass block extrusion with operable strip windows like the circular glass block volume and the ground floor." Mr. Ledner designed the building in 1964 for the National Maritime Union and the hospital acquired it in 1979.
The hospital has entered an agreement with Rudin Management to redevelop its properties with residential condominiums by converting some existing buildings and erecting some new ones so that the hospital can erect a new facility on the site of the Ledner building, which is now known as the Edward and Theresa O'Toole Medical Services Building.
The commission voted in October 6 to 4 to grant the hospital permission to demolish the Ledner building, which is notable for its scalloped edges on the grounds of hardship but it asked the hospital to continue to explore other design options.
The article by Matt Chaban article was accompanied by a rendering, shown here, of a rectilinear tower designed by Ian Bader of Pei Cobb Freed as an "alternative" to the previously submitted designed with a broad curved "lenticular" facade facing south.
The article quoted commissioner Stephen Byrns as stating that "For the better part of a year, we've been looking at this project, and I think it is as inappropriate as when we started," adding "I cannot even begin to comment on the architecture given its out-of-scale bulk."
The lenticular design would lower the height of the planned tower of about 300 feet by about 36 feet.
Commissioner Margery Perlmutter said, according to the article, that "It's a little bit frustrating when every time we ask for alternatives, we get an off-handed response that lacks the quality, details, and attention of the original proposal," she said. The article said she endorsed a proposal put forward by Byrns that would either bridge or build over a section of West 12th Street, thus allowing the hospital to incorporate a 15,000-square-foot triangular lot that is planned to serve as a loading dock, but the developer said that between the complexity of demapping the street and the parameters of making the hospital function properly, such an approach would be nearly impossible.
The article said that "several commissioners said that the alternative proposal obviously did not work, and that they favored the lenticular design" and added that "perhaps most importantly, commission chair Robert Tierney seems to support the lenticular plan, as well."
The Rudin Organization has also promised to convert part of a property nearby as a neighborhood public school for the community as part of the protracted controversy over the hospital's expansion.
Last May, the commission informally but definitely told St. Vincent's to go back to the drawing board because its plan to demolish O'Toole to build a 325-foot-tall new hospital on the west side of Seventh Ave. at 11th St. would not be appropriate for the historic district. The hospital came back two weeks later with the proposed hospital tower reduced to 299 feet tall and a residential tower on the east side of Seventh Ave. to be built by the Rudin Organization reduced from 265 feet tall to 200 feet.
At a meeting in June, Frederic Schwartz, an architect noted for imaginative urban schemes, announced that he was collaborating with Mr. Ledner to preserve the O'Toole building as the base for a new hospital tower structure that would be a "twin intersecting circular glass block extrusion with operable strip windows like the circular glass block volume and the ground floor." Mr. Ledner designed the building in 1964 for the National Maritime Union and the hospital acquired it in 1979.
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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