The board of directors of the Whitney Museum of American Art voted yesterday to approve a plan to a new museum facility on Gansevoort Street, the Meat-Packing District in Far West Chelesa near the Hudson River.

The new facility will be designed by Renzo Piano, who recently redesigned by the Morgan Library andparticipated with Richard Rogers in the designed the great and mammoth Centre Pompidou Center in Paris.

The decision to move forward with the new downtown building leaves uncertain the future of its very important brutalistic architectural landmark designed by Marcel Breuer that was built when it museum renovated from Gertrude Vanderbilt's townhouses on Macdougal Plaza and West 8th Street in Greenwich Village.

The Breuer design included a sunken plaza, a cantilevered floors and a bridge entrance, trapezoidal windows and large floor places.

Subsequently, the museum considered expansion plans by Richard Rogers, which would have been a tower with movable facade panels on the townhouse sites immediately to the south on the avenue, Rem Koolhaas, Michael Graves, who proposed a variety of Post-Modern pastiches that looked like discarded candy wrappers, for the site and would have built over and overwhelmed the landmark Breuer Building.

A recent report by DNAinfo indicated that the museum's staff was favoring a major relocation to the Chelsea site, but were concerned about a $131 million grant by Leonard Lauder that required that it not sell the Breuer Building.

At yesterday's board of directors meeting, however, Mr. Lauder indicated that he would not oppose the move to Chelsea and that "according to sources close to both museums, sensitive discussions are also underway between the Whitney and the Met about an eventual sale of the building to the encyclopedic Fifth Avenue institution."

The Metropolitan Museum might only lease the Whitney spaces on Madison Avenue for exhibitions of large contemporary art works, that normally can be shown at the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.

The Whitney has changed is mandates in the past. Director Tom Armstrong, for example, sold off many of its very major and important 19th Century American Paintings at auction, and the museum has opened and closed several major "satellite" museums across from Grand Central Terminal and in the Federal Reserve Plaza Building downtown.

Decision to break ground next spring is the crucial next step in the evolution of own downtown museum, one which will insure that the Whitney can boldly realize its mission to be the defining museum of 20th and 21st Century American Art.

An expansion plan in East 75th Street for the Whitney Museum of American Art ran into fierce opposition from neighborhood residents and preservation groups at a recent public hearing, with the angriest objections focusing on a move to demolish two brownstones next to the museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

A well-organized contingent of artists, architects and museum directors who support the expansion, designed by the architect Renzo Piano, countered their arguments. Among them were the painter Chuck Close, the sculptor Mark di Suvero, architects like Maya Lin, and museum directors including Philippe de Montebello of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Glenn D. Lowry of the Museum of Modern Art.

The museum said it needed more space to display its collection (which has grown to 16,000 works from 2,000 over the last four decades), to manage visitors moving through its cramped lobby (now 577,000 a year) and to accommodate education programs. (It has no auditorium or classrooms.)

Calling his building "a little tower," Mr. Piano pointed out at the hearing that his plan would add just 35 percent more space to the current museum. "Two things I love and respect" are the Breuer building and the brownstones, he said. "The idea is just to find the right balance."

A recent report by DNAinfo indicated that the museum's staff was favoring a major relocation to the Chelsea site, but was concerned about a $131 million grant by Leonard Lauder that required that it not sell the Breuer Building.

At yesterday's board of directors meeting, however, Mr. Lauder indicated that he would not oppose the move to Chelsea and that "according to sources close to both museums, sensitive discussions are also underway between the Whitney and the Met about an eventual sale of the building to the encyclopedic Fifth Avenue institution.

The Metropolitan Museum might only lease the Whitney spaces on Madison Avenue for exhibitions of large contemporary art works, that normally can be shown at the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. No discussions have appeared yet publically on the implications of a Whitney Museum move to the city's famous "Museum Mile."

The Whitney has changed is mandates in the past. Director Tom Armstrong, for example, sold off many of its very major and important 19th Century American Paintings at auction, and the museum has opened and closed several major "satellite" museums across from Grand Central Terminal and in the Federal Reserve Plaza Building downtown.

Ground is expected to be broken next spring for the Downtown Whitney.