The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to grant a certificate of appropriateness to a revised plan by Friedland Properties to make an addition to the existing two-story building at 746 Madison Avenue between 64th and 65th Streets.

Friedland Properties initially proposed a 14-story, mixed-use building with 12 residential condominium apartments and four floors of commercial space at the site and the proposed building would have connected with a townhouse designed in 1897 by Grosvenor Atterbury on the southwest corner of the avenue at 65th Street that is also owned by Friedland Properties.

The plan ran into considerable opposition from some community and civic groups and the commission did not approve it.

Last month, Friedland Properties presently a dramatically downsized revision that would only add three stories to the existing building that now houses La Goulue, a popular French restaurant.

The commission still had some concerns about the design asked for some changes as well as clarification from the Department of Planning about some Madison Avenue Special Zoning District regulations related to streetwalls.

The new design by Page Ayres Cowley, who also designed the previous plans, would contain only commercial space and would not connect with the adjoining townhouse at the corner through which the earlier plan would have had an entrance.

The landmarks committee of Community Board 8 had voted unanimously June 16 to recommend that the Landmarks Preservation issue a certificate of appropriateness for a revised for Friedland Properties.

The new design conforms to existing zoning and building regulations.

Ms. Cowley told the committee that the existing, two-story, cast-iron facade on the building would be restored, as it would have been also in the previous plan, and that the red-brick facade of the upper three-floors of the building would be closely related in color to the existing base.

Most of the commissioners had felt that the new plans were attractive and an improvement, but were hoping that the one-and-a-half-story, Neo-Georgian, curved wing elements at the north and south ends of the mid-block building to be retained, keeping the building's profile relatively independent of its neighbors.

The new design retains those elements but is setback a few inches from them and the decorative cast-iron facade on the lower two floors. The new design has also made the new building's cornice a bit more pronounced as requested by the commission.

An article by Christopher Gray in the January 6, 2007 edition of The New York Times noted that in 1885 Temple B'nai Jeshurun erected a Byzantine-Moorish-style synagogue on the site designed by Rafael Gustavino and Schwarzmann & Buchman.

In 1917, the synagogue was replaced by a four-story school that was erected by William H. Chesebrough and designed by Rouse & Goldstone and that building, Mr. Gray noted, kept the shell of the synagogue that subsequently was used as a dance studio and hall by Helen Moller.

In 1937, the top two floors the building were removed and in the 1940s the Navy League of the United States occupied the upper floor as a workroom where women sewed cloths for the children of enlisted Navy men.