In more Canal Street news, a stretch of the south side of Canal between Broadway and Church just east of the old Pearl Paint building, is being redeveloped for residential by Trans World Equities — resurrecting a very similar plan approved by Landmarks in 2018. The building was originally designed as nine stories; it is now seven, though the seventh floor is set back. (And the history of the site with this team goes back even further, to 2011.)

The architects are Paul A. Castrucci, as they were 15 years ago — I am waiting on permission to publish the more recent renderings, but you can catch them here on Yimby in the meantime. (I don’t mess with those sorts of things after being sued a couple times!) The ones below are from the 2018 plan and show the approved terracotta facade.

2018 plan by Paul A. Castrucci Architects

The site is in the Tribeca East Historic District and makes up the top of the original “triangle” named Tribeca. The six, 25-foot-wide buildings were built in 1825-26 for Isaac Lawrence (d. 1841), a shipping merchant and prominent American banker. By 1851, the buildings had been converted for commercial use; the occupants during that year sold umbrellas and corsets. In 1892-93 the building was raised to four stories and contained ground-story shops, second-story storage space, and a dwelling at the third and fourth stories. Between 1962 and 1965, Via Canalis hired architect Abraham L. Seiden to remove the upper two stories. The facades are brick laid in Flemish bond (now painted).

The architects describe their design this way: “Like the grand commercial stores of the 19th century, the trabeated [horizontal beams] facade of 312-322 Canal Street is ordered by an elegant repetition of ‘posts’ and ‘beams’ creating a unified expression. This repetition is reinforced through our priority to create a deep façade, well over a foot from terracotta fin to window, that allows for the play of light and shadow characteristic of many of these earlier cast-iron architectural landmarks.”

2018 plan by Paul A. Castrucci Architects

2018 plan by Paul A. Castrucci Architects