Tag Archives: landmark

Hugh O’Neill Building

Manhattan, , , , , , , , , ,

The dazzling white Hugh O’Neill Building on Sixth Avenue is a great example of historic restoration and recycling in New York. Not only did the developers bring an old building back to life, they also magically added two floors without changing the original appearance. While structural problems have appeared, the future looks bright.

Hugh O’Neill, an Irish immigrant, was a very successful retailer. He outgrew his original Sixth Avenue store and replaced it in 1887 with a four-story double-domed emporium. In 1890, he expanded the store at the rear of the West 20th Street wing. In 1895 he added a fifth floor (raising the domes one story in the process).

Alas, after O’Neill died in 1902 the store (and most neighboring retailers) deteriorated and closed. The corner domes were removed in the early 1900s, and the building was converted to lofts.

In 2004 the by-then grey building got a new lease on life: Conversion to condominium apartments. The developer Elad Properties, and architects Cetra/Ruddy Inc. got Landmarks Preservation Commission approval to restore the missing domes – and add two stories of apartments at the same time. The trick was to set back the new floors so that they are not visible from the street.

In December 2012 one of the building’s columns on West 2oth Street collapsed, forcing evacuation. Repairs were made, but scaffolding still covers the West 20th Street facade at this writing (June 2013).

Hugh O’Neill Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 655 Sixth Avenue between W 20th and W 21st Streets
  • Year completed: 1887
  • Architect: Mortimer C. Merritt; Cetra/Ruddy Inc. (renovation)
  • Floors: 5
  • Style: cast iron, neo-Grec
  • New York City Landmark: 1989
Hugh O’Neill Building Recommended Reading

Google Map

The Arlington

Brooklyn, , , , , , , , ,

The Arlington is the last and tallest of four ornate Romanesque Revival/Queen Anne style apartment buildings built on Montague Street; the others, designed by the Parfitt Bros. firm, are The Montague (105), and The Berkeley/The Grosvenor (111/115). The 10-story tower makes this one stand out.

Playwright Arthur Miller lived here, as well as artist/filmmaker Marie Menken and poet Willard Maas.

An Arlington resident – Chuck Taylor – seems to be the building’s self-appointed historian: He’s written four blog pieces about the structure. His Smoking Nun essay includes vintage photos of Montague Street when it was a trolley route, and before.

The Arlington Vital Statistics
  • Location: 62 Montague Street between Hicks Street and Montague Terrace
  • Year completed: 1887
  • Architect: Montrose W. Morris
  • Floors: 10
  • Style: Romanesque Revival
  • New York City Landmark: 1965
  • National Register of Historic Places: 1962
The Arlington Recommended Reading

Google Map

The Montague

Brooklyn, , , , , , , , ,

The Montague is one of three Queen Anne style apartment buildings designed by Parfitt Brothers on Montague Street; the other two, a joined set of near twins, are just three doors up the street.

The eight-story Montague started out as elevatorless(!) apartments, but were converted at the turn of the century into an apartment hotel (see New York Sun advertisement).

Apartment hotels competed with “bachelor flats” of the era: Daily maid service was included, but there were no kitchens – residents could take their meals in a ground floor cafe on the European Plan.

As the neighborhood changed, so did the building – becoming a welfare hotel, and returning to an apartment building. It’s now a 25-unit co-op, with one- and two-bedroom apartments listing for $750,000 and up.

The Montague Vital Statistics
  • Location: 105 Montague Street, between Hicks and Henry Streets
  • Year completed: 1885
  • Architect: Parfitt Bros.
  • Floors: 8
  • Style: Queen Anne
  • New York City Landmark: 1965
The Montague Recommended Reading

Google Map

The Berkeley / The Grosvenor

Brooklyn, , , , , , , , ,

The Berkeley / The Grosvenor are a pair of Queen Anne style apartment buildings on Montague Street, mirror-image twins cleverly joined to look like one massive structure.

The brownstone, brick and terra cotta building was restored in 2004.

The Berkeley / The Grosvenor Vital Statistics
  • Location: 111-113 and 115-117 Montague Street, between Hicks and Henry Streets
  • Year completed: 1886
  • Architect: Parfitt Bros.
  • Floors: 8
  • Style: Queen Anne
  • New York City Landmark: 1965
The Berkeley / The Grosvenor Recommended Reading
  • NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission designation report (Brooklyn Heights Historic District)
  • The New York Times Streetscapes column
  • Conproco (restoration contractor) project description
  • “An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn,” pg. 158 (in Google Books)

Google Map

Franklin Trust Company Building

Brooklyn, , , , , , , , , , ,

Franklin Trust Company Building (aka Franklin Tower Apartments) was built to impress. The bank is no more (absorbed through mergers into present-day Citibank), but the building still impresses.

The former bank/office building stands at the corner of Montague and Clinton Streets, on the block where Montague transitions from residential to “Bankers’ Row.” Diagonally across the street are three consecutive bank buildings.

In 2009 Rothzeid Kaiserman Thomson & Bee (RKTB) performed a $10 million “gut renovation” of the building, creating 25 condo apartments plus retail spaces while preserving and restoring the exterior.

Franklin Trust Company Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 166 Montague Street at Clinton Street
  • Year completed: 1891
  • Architect: George L. Morse (original); Rothzeid Kaiserman Thomson & Bee (conversion)
  • Floors: 10
  • Style: Romanesque Revival
  • New York City Landmark: 1965
Franklin Trust Company Building Recommended Reading
  • NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission designation report (Brooklyn Heights Historic District)
  • Brownstoner – Past and Present blog
  • Brooklyn Heights Blog archive (6 items – be sure to see “Sneak Peek” with video)
  • Street Easy listing
  • Halstead Properties video
  • RKTB (conversion architects) website

Google Map

Brooklyn Trust Company Building

Brooklyn, , , , , , , , ,

Brooklyn Trust Company Building, deemed “the most beautiful building on Brooklyn’s ‘Bank Row’,” is well preserved inside and out. The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission took the unusual step of designating both the interior and the exterior as landmarks.

Chase Bank sold the building in 2007; those owners sold it in 2011, and the new owner is creating condominium apartments (Barry Rice Architects) in the rear (Pierrepont Street) annex.

Brooklyn Trust Company Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 177 Montague Street at Clinton Street
  • Year completed: 1915
  • Architect: York & Sawyer
  • Floors: 5
  • Style: Italian Renaissance
  • New York City Landmark: 1996 (interior and exterior)
  • National Register of Historic Places: 2009
Brooklyn Trust Company Building Recommended Reading

Google Map

The Heights Casino

Brooklyn, , , , , , , ,

The Heights Casino is marked by distinctive gables, not tables: Flemish Revival style, applied to a private (and non-gambling) club. It is famed for games, though: tennis and squash; and for high society: the indoor tennis court can be converted to a ballroom.

The club’s former outdoor tennis courts were sold – on condition that the apartment building (Casino Mansions Apartments) to be built would complement the club, architecturally.

(Also see Casino Mansions Apartments.)

The Heights Casino Vital Statistics
  • Location: 75 Montague Street between Hicks Street and Pierrepont Place
  • Year completed: 1905
  • Architect: Boring & Tilton
  • Floors: 5
  • Style: Flemish Revival
  • New York City Landmark: 1965
The Heights Casino Recommended Reading

Google Map

Casino Mansions Apartments

Brooklyn, , , , , , , , ,

Casino Mansions Apartments lacks the stepped gables of its western neighbor (Heights Casino), but the brickwork is distinctly Flemish bond, and the stone detailing aligns perfectly. No coincidence – the apartment building stands on the site of the Heights Casino’s former outdoor tennis court, land that was sold with the condition that the new building blend in with the old. It helped that the same architect designed both: William A. Boring.

As built, the luxury rental building had one eight-room/two-bath and one nine-room/three bath apartment per floor. Among the “best modern conveniences and improvements” reported by The New York Times in 1910 were steam clothes dryers, sanitary garbage closets, electric plate warmers, porcelain-lined refrigerators, and wall safes.

The apartments are now co-op, with units going for $1 to $3 million.

(Also see Heights Casino.)

Casino Mansions Apartments Vital Statistics
  • Location: 200 Hicks Street at Montague Street
  • Year completed: 1910
  • Architect: William A. Boring
  • Floors: 8
  • Style: Flemish Revival
  • New York City Landmark: 1965
Casino Mansions Apartments Recommended Reading

Google Map

Gainsborough Studios

Manhattan, , , , , , , , , ,

Gainsborough Studios is a distinctively detailed, colorful cooperative apartment building on a street sometimes termed bland.

The 1908 landmark was a cooperative in the original sense – intended for a community of artists – and designed for studios. The park-facing apartments are all duplexes, with double-height windows to capture the light. The rear apartments are all standard-height units. See floor plans (click plans for enlarged view). Alas, the apartments’ multi-million-dollar price tags are out of artists’ reach.

The facade was restored in 1988 – the same year the building was designated a NYC landmark.

The building next door (220 Central Park South) was demolished, and the lot will remain vacant and boarded up until the joint owners can settle their dispute. Vornado Real Estate Trust wants to build a new tower; Extell, which owns the underground parking garage (accessed via W 58th Street) won’t vacate. Extell also owns the new One57 tower and is building the 1,500-foot-tall Nordstrom Tower directly behind 220 Central Park South.

It seems that historic Gainsborough Studios will soon be dwarfed by its new neighbors east and south.

Gainsborough Studios Vital Statistics
  • Location: 222 Central Park South between Seventh Avenue and Broadway
  • Year completed: 1908
  • Architect: Charles W. Buckham
  • Floors: 16
  • Style: Victorian / Edwardian
  • New York City Landmark: 1988
Gainsborough Studios Recommended Reading

Google Map

Knox Building

Manhattan, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Knox Building is a landmark 10-story Beaux Arts commercial building, wrapped by the modern 29-story HSBC Tower. Both have ties to 19th-Century personalities.

Civil War hero Edward Knox took over his father’s ailing hat business and pledged to make the Knox name known wherever hats were sold. The Knox Hat Building on Fifth Avenue was part of the route taken. Knox, active in veterans’ affairs, met architect John H. Duncan and was impressed by his designs of the Grand Army Plaza Memorial Arch and the General Grant National Memorial (Grant’s Tomb). Knox subsequently commissioned Duncan to build his newest store and company headquarters.

In 1964 Republic National Bank bought the building and converted it to banking, making relatively few exterior changes (though they did remove the mezzanine). Then in 1985 Republic wrapped a 29-story L-shaped tower around the Knox Building. HSBC acquired Republic, and in 2006 made additional restorations and renovations to the structures.

The artfully done tower (Eli Attia, architect) comes off as a drape backdrop for the Beaux Arts Knox Building. The art came at the expense of the Kress Building, which many preservationists wanted to save from demolition.

HSBC Tower preserves some history that predates the Kress Building, though. In the middle of the Fifth Avenue facade a bronze door memorializes the site of an 1850s “House of Mystery.” That mansion was owned by the Wendel family until the last daughter, Ella, died in 1931 at age 78.

The five-story red brick home was said to be the last residence on that stretch of Fifth, an eccentric home to an eccentric and very wealthy family.

When Ella died, the estate reportedly took 10 years, 250 lawyers and $2 million to settle – there were no less than 2,300 individuals claiming to be heirs.

Drew University was among the beneficiaries of Ella’s will: They received, then sold, the mansion, and a Kress Department Store was built on the site.

Knox Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 452 Fifth Avenue at W 40th Street
  • Year completed: 1902
  • Architect: John H. Duncan
  • Floors: 10
  • Style: Beaux Arts
  • New York City Landmark: 1980
  • National Register of Historic Places: 1982
HSBC Tower Vital Statistics
  • Location: 452 Fifth Avenue at W 40th Street
  • Year completed: 1985
  • Architect: Eli Attia
  • Floors: 29
  • Style: Postmodern
Knox Building / HSBC Tower Recommended Reading

Google Map