Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Meet PS 122's new steel tower

As you know, PS 122 on First Avenue at Ninth Street is getting a facelift...



The Architect's Newspaper has the details on what all this might look like. According to the story:

The Department of Design and Construction (DDC) has commissioned Deborah Berke & Partners to complete a $16 million renovation of the aging structure and bring it up to current code requirements.

While the crux of the commission involves upgrading the 1894 building’s outmoded ingress/egress routes and substandard mechanical systems, Berke also saw the opportunity to improve the interior and how it was organized. The center’s primary inhabitants — PS 122 Gallery, Performance Space 122, and Mabou Mines — all grew into their rooms organically over the years, without much thought about how they functioned as a whole.


And!

The architects quickly determined that the most economic and elegant solution was to place the new elevator, fire stair, and mechanical ducting within a tower addition situated in a yard to the north of the building. “Typical of a 100-year-old building, it has a fragile structural system of terracotta arches between steel structural elements,” said Jones. “You can’t just pop holes in that.”

Consigning these upgrades to the add-on pavilion also preserved the historical character of the original building, which was valued by tenants and the DDC. To minimize its impact, the addition will be constructed of light and luminous materials. The tower itself, a steel structure, will be clad in glass with a perforated and corrugated stainless steel scrim. A canopy and marquee that jut into the street, announcing the new entrance, will also be of glass and perforated steel.





The construction is expected to be done by the summer of 2013. So three more year's of the sidewalk shed on the corner. At first glimpse of the renderings, this looks like an awkward marriage of the old and new...


[Images via]

12 comments:

glamma said...

awkward indeed

HippieChick said...

So they took out the kids' playground to toss up this ugly and intrusive tower instead? Terrific!

Oh, does anyone here know what's the story with the building right across 1st Avenue from PS 122? The one with the boarded-up windows that seems to be a pigeon hostel?

It's been like that for gotta be at least 20 years, right? It seems weird to waste such prime real estate, but maybe we should count our blessings...and will the little old ladies PLEASE stop feeding the damn birds!!!

Lori said...

Looks like someone has been spending too much time idolizing Philip Johnson. Bad.

EV Grieve said...

Hi HippieChick. Oh, the place above the former Angelica's Herbs? I'm fascinated by those upper floors. Jeremiah did a post on it in December 2008:

http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2008/12/angelicas-herbs.html

Anonymous said...

what is lost in this notice is that the ONLY reason that the former public school building was turned over to the community in the first place was that the real "community" in ps 122 consisted of a day care center that was evicted from the third street music school when they sold that space for market-rate condos. the theater. the artists and other groups helped fill the building with some vibrance, but the loss of a neighborhood day care center was the promary worry, at that time, of everyone concerned. good old lower east side negotiated the package. floyd feldman, former directer passed away and i (former associate director) left under stressful conditions. too bad goles did not fight to protect their project - saving a day care center.

Jill said...

An "elegant" solution by tacking on a glass thing? How delusional.

~evilsugar25 said...

HippieChick/EV - I've pondered that building for many years now (that was the east corner of my old block)... I always assumed the upper, boarded up floors housed "herb gardens" for Angelica's below.

But it's been, as HC says, at least 15-20 yrs that the top has been closed up... is there any way whatsoever that it would ever make sense to renew that building? Just the other day I went by and uncontrollably (and dreadfully) imagined a tower on that corner... I know it's coming...

HippieChick said...

Oh dear God, let us hope not! The people at Little Village Postal said there's been some talk of condos (of COURSE), and that the place is a rat ranch, but otherwise nobody knows.

It was bad enough when Theater for the New City sold out for that tower monstrosity...though it did seem appropriate that the Giant Landlord Rat was camped out protesting it.

But at least one floor of the corner building used to be storage space for the grocery that was in Angelica's old space, IIRC. Long, long ago. Remember the underwear store?

~evilsugar25 said...

hm, i in fact do not remember the underwear store. i think i remember herbs as far back as i go. i do remember when east village pizza was rose's vintage tho. right?

Amikole said...

After 30 years of serving children, my littlest child cnnnot follow in the footsteps of her siblings and go to Children's Liberation Daycare. What a SHAME!

Anonymous said...

I remember the underwear store! - Lingerie for Less - and the beautifully grumpy emphysemic lady that ran the place. - I forgot that was the old herb store - Oz: things come and go so quickly around here - for a while I have been enragedly obsessed with the now closed Angelicas (remember the italian grocery Garabaldis before that? who knew such a thing as green pasta!)- not so much for the pigeons or the cute little old lady who insists on feeding them (she really is cute) - but that it sits there like a pigeon Crack House - barely tagged - it creeps me out and I can't imagine any good will come of it - in my younger days (shakes a fist, grrwling) we would plan to take it over and ... or now it will be another nail bank condo with a sidewalk beer pong permit for extra loud cell phone conversations about how adorably edgy it is in alphabet city... woohoo - - - I heave in the privacy of my own mind...

a ps122 tenant said...

correction to anonymous:
"what is lost in this notice is that the .....ONLY reason that the former public school building was turned over to the community in the first place..... was that the real "community" in ps 122 consisted of a day care "

This is not true. The daycare center was a much later addition to the PS122 building. Floyd Feldman and GOLES negotiated it, yes, but much later. A small group of organizations acquired acess to that building 6 months after the building was closed by the city. The original group consisted of: Polish-American Urban Alliance, Chinatown Planning Coulcil day care center, a school on the 4th floor which then moved to Avenue D, the LES Service Center. The day care center which was evicted from the Third Street Music school was a later edition. That day care center, run by two women, Holly and Joan, was called "Liberation Day Care". Then, even much later, came the day care center that Floyd Feldman and Goles negotiated into the building. That one was called Children's "something", and when Holly and Joan left, that day care center, which came in much, much later, changed their name to Children's Liberation. To state that the ONLY REASON the building was turned into a community center was to accommodate that day care center that Floyd Feldman and GOLES negotiated into the building, is false. The reason that building was turned into a community center is because 5-6 very small organizations, guided by Kathy Wolpe, sought to utilize that building and thus, really, save it from the typical vandalism that happens when buildings are closed. But the GOLES, day care center was much, much, much later. The arts groups were already in the building when they moved in. I've been there for 30 years.