Eric Jankiewicz reports for Curbed.
Today, the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved plans for a new building at 100 Franklin Street, a development they sent back to the drawing board in November. Peter Guthrie of the development and design team at DDG presented a completely different design, stripped of all the elements that had once made Tribecans seethe. “I think this is extraordinary and exhilarating,” one member of the commission said about the changes. “This is now resolved in the right way.” The original iteration featured a slew of materials—fritted glass, metal, recovered brick—but a more simplified version won over the commission.
The new building, which the commission said fits more with the neighborhood, features brown bricks, as well a Romanesque arch on the ground floor and Jack arches throughout the façade. DDG first revealed their plans to the public last year during a community board 1 meeting. Located in Tribeca, the area currently holds two triangular parking lots created in 1930s, between White and Franklin Streets on Sixth Avenue. Soon after the plans were shown, more than 800 people signed a petition calling the building “historically inappropriate,” according to DNAinfo.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission echoed the same sentiment in their deliberations at the time. The design proposals were for a condo that featured four-layered façade, with fritted glass, reclaimed brick, metal, and interior glazing. All of which the commission called “attention-calling” at the top and that it “just seems muddled and trying to do a lot of things.”
The developers and architects took all of this feedback and came back today with a completely revised design, which a commissioner called “simple and elegant,” and, most importantly, “contextual.” During his presentation, Guthrie actually apologized to the commission for the original design and likened him and the developers to excited revelers, drunk from anticipation.
“I’m glad you guys went back and sobered up,” a member of the commission said right before they voted to approve the building. It had been previously thought that the developers would have finished purchasing the lot by end of 2013. But the developers asked Peter Matera, the current owner of the 100 Franklin St. lot, for more time before setting a closing date.
