Adding a cherry on top

From the very beginning of urban coexistence (or at least from the moment when mankind came up with the bright idea of living somewhere other than the ground floor of a one-story structure) there has been the temptation to build up, to maximize the profits from one’s real estate, or, in the words of C. Gilbert, an early theoretician of the skyscraper, writing in 1900, “to make the land pay.”

That this trend continues unabated to this day, indeed, strengthened as never before, should be news to no one who lives in New York City. Here even residential towers regularly rise higher than buildings dreamed of doing only a few years ago.

Of course, proprietors have often fought to gain a little extra from their holdings by adding a few penthouse stories to a pre-existing building. These new additions, however, bear little resemblance in spirit to the penthouses of yesteryear. Whereas those efforts strained to be drably inconspicuous, usually attempting to fit in as seamlessly as possible with the pre-existing host structure, or sometimes even to be invisible at street level, today’s version of the penthouse is intent on making a statement, seeking to declare its architectural emancipation from the structure that just happens to be lying beneath it.

For some reason, the Meatpacking District in Lower Manhattan seems to be one of the main sites for this sort of activity. The reasons are not especially difficult to divine: Since much of it is landmarked, there is a limit to how much new building can occur, and how high it can rise over the valued and picturesque structures that are already on the ground. At the same time, this being a glamorous arts district, traversed as it is by the High Line and bordering as it does on Chelsea, it would seem almost impolite of architects not to try to make some clamorous statement of their own fabulous individuality.

One of the earliest examples of this sort of construction in the area is the Porter House, at 66 Ninth Avenue. This consists of a 20,000-square-foot addition, completed in 2003, to a brick building from almost exactly a century before. This is also one of the earlier projects completed by SHoP Architects, which has subsequently gone on to bigger things. The addition could not look more different from the pale brick structure above which it rises, and over which it cantilevers eight feet toward the south, even as it is set back from the brick building’s western exposure. The addition consists of zinc panels that form an elaborate and syncopated rhythm of floor-to-ceiling windows, commingled with white and dark gray accents. The latter predominates to such a degree as to form a decidedly dark, almost menacing, presence on the local skyline. The augmentation seems to be alternately sitting on the Renaissance Revival building beneath it and crushing it into submission.

Something similar in spirit can be found just around the corner at 345Meatpacking, also known as 345 West 14th Street, an attractive pile completed only last year. The crucial difference between this project (designed by DDG) and the foregoing one is that, whereas that was an intervention upon a pre-existing building, every part of this newer building was conceived and constructed from the ground up. From the street to the eighth floor, the building is clad in pale matte brick with punched-windows suggestive of those of an early skyscraper. But this brick passage dissipates as it continues up three more stories to the top, where it becomes nothing more than a single bay. In its place is a metallic and decidedly more modern presence, a three-story penthouse conceived very much in the International Style of the mid-20th century, with elegantly elongated floor-to-ceiling windows.

But where SHoP Architects sought a collision between the two parts of its building, the interaction here between the older and more modern styles is one of surprising harmony and grace.

Now there are two new projects in the offing, or potentially in the offing: the expansion of Chelsea Market and the addition of several floors to the two-story 9-19 Ninth Avenue, best known as the former home of Pastis (a bistro which is now slated to open somewhere else in the neighborhood). The former Pastis building is about to become a flagship for Restoration Hardware, a home-furnishings retailer that recently signed a 15-year lease for nearly $250 million. 

The building, which was built in the 1880s as a stable, will be given an annex containing 70,000 square feet, as well as an outdoor space on the third floor and a wraparound terrace. After a tug-of-war with the Landmarks Preservation Committee, the reliably expert firm of BKSK Architects came up with a design that appears to have passed muster. It consists of a three-story glass annex that is very different in feeling from the two stories of red brick that make up the existing building, and also a modification of the ground floor into a continuous ribbon window at street level.

Needless to say, neither addition is in the same style as that of the original structure, but the interaction of the three elements (as far as one can tell on the basis of the renderings) is chaste, respectful and strikingly elegant. The glass at street level, though of a different cut from that of the top portion, and more traditional as well, should open up the building to the street in interesting ways. Meanwhile the topmost portion, despite its insistent symmetry, will add a strong element of variety.

Surely it is a better effort in every way than the latest designs for Chelsea Market, which are somewhat old at this point, and may well change before we’re done with them. The denizens of Chelsea seem to see this building as a public trust, and they have not taken at all kindly to efforts to add to it in the name of profit. According to the real estate website Curbed, the developer Jamestown, having been disappointed in its attempts to place a hotel atop the building, now hopes to create a 330,000-square-foot addition consisting of office space. 

The newer plan will not be quite as bad as the originally planned addition, which had no refinement whatever. A several-tiered curtain-walled excrescence, the old plan was as mismatched to the preexistent Chelsea Market as the Porter House addition by SHoP was to its host-building. But whereas the colliding masses of the latter project were intentional and artistically rewarding, the results above the Chelsea Market seemed boring and insipid. 

The newer rendering is a little better, insofar as the addition is more unified and sits within a red-brick frame that at least has some contextual tact to it. But even this rendering is a few years old at this point, and if it too is in the process of being redesigned — and ultimately superseded — that would not be a bad thing either.  TRD

James Gardner is the architecture critic for The Real Deal.