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Robert Ripps book
History of Tribeca Buildings
City Building to Get Residential Makeover
The city-owned 22 Reade (comprising 14-22 Reade, at the corner of Elk) was one of three buildings—along with 346 Broadway (a.k.a. 108 Leonard) and 49-51 Chambers—that the Bloomberg administration decided to sell to developers. I would’ve thought that it had long ago been handed over to the Hoeg Corporation, but the website at 22reade.com features the “22 Reade Street Purchase Proposal,” dated April 2016, directed to the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services and the New York City Economic Development Corporation.
Hoeg and Bizzi & Partners Development will pay $28 million for the building; the deal includes the creation of the African Cultural History Museum, to go along with the existing African Burial Ground National Monument, directly north of the building. From the proposal: “Our offer includes a minimum of 5,000 usable square feet for an African Arts Museum that integrates the African Burial Ground Memorial, or an alternate use based on the City’s input. […] Our team is experienced, diverse, and MWBE owned. The Hoeg Corporation is an African American owned development firm with a long history and intimate knowledge of the site. Rodney Leon, our team’s architect, designed the African Burial Ground Memorial and will work closely with our engineering team.”
The renderings offer more information. The easternmost building (14 Reade?), which runs along Elk, is getting a new façade, and the first three floors appear to be getting reduced to two. (I’ve included current photos for comparison.) Second, the brick backside of 14-22 Reade will be replaced with a bland curtain wall and a column of windows. And the entire development could be getting a rooftop terrace and/or a penthouse addition. The building is landmarked, so this plan has to get the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s approval.
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This is a great project for TriBeCa and it’s great to see that the space is going to be used for such a wonderful purpose.
I can’t imagine the Landmarks Commission would approve such architecturally inappropriate alterations to these historic buildings.
Jeremy,
Thanks for your feedback. I think “inappropriate” is far too strong, but I appreciate your point. This rendering gives a bit of a false impression, actually, our goal would be creating a new building that retains essentially all of 22 Reade’s LPC features. Ideally the buildings would actually look the same (with technical improvements). In these renderings, the building looks different in large part due to the coloring of the brick on the northern wall. It would remain red.
The buildings would be redeveloped in a very LPC friendly way. By improving structural problems and introducing a publicly accessible and open ground floor, we would introduce a lot more light and air to the Burial Ground Memorial and improve accessibility in that area.
We’ve gone through an exhaustive exercise to decide how to best utilize the LPC features: the iron work, cast facades, the brick, and the 3 buildings’ merged design. We’d be targeting an adaptive-reuse-renewal approach, where we could use the historic features to complement a new, efficient green building; incorporating a large eductional, cultural, or museum facility.
This is a very early stage and we’re trying to create a dialogue to engage with the City and community on this project. So even if you don’t necessarily like the design, I hope you appreciate our goal of putting an under utilized space into play as a cultural center or live-work-learn space, and continue the conversation with a City representative, because I’d really like to see movement on this project.
Thanks.
wow an actual thoughtful response. thanks dan hoeg! it seems liike ur 1 the few developers who actually cares what gets built.
good luck! i hope we get to see you do something there soon.
This would have been good for the area. It’s a mess now, I was walking by it today, looms oppressively
I actually work in the building now. Wonder if the deal went through?
I still have HRP meetings there too. Let me know when they starting clearing out the conference room so we can snag the Herman Miller chairs.