The New York Landmarks Conservancy has announced the winners of the 23rd Lucy G. Moses Preservation Awards.
14 Penn Plaza, 998 Fifth Avenue, Centennial Memorial Temple, Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, Home Life Insurance Company Building, the Judd Foundation and the Mayer-Loeb House in Manhattan are among the recipients that will be recognized at the April 29, 2013 Ceremony at Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall.
The Lucy G. Moses Preservation Awards, called the “Preservation Oscars,” are the Conservancy’s highest honors for excellence in preservation.
The awards are named for Lucy G. Moses, a New Yorker whose generosity benefited the City for more than 50 years. The Awards have recognized over 225 individuals, organizations, and building owners for their contributions to the City.
Franny Eberhart, longtime preservation advocate, will receive the Preservation Leadership Award. The Honorable Helen M. Marshall, Queens Borough President, will receive the Public Leadership Award for making preservation a priority in her administration.
FRIENDS of the Upper East Side Historic Districts will receive the Preservation Organization Award for its three decades of protecting the significant architecture of the Upper East Side.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will receive a special Stewardship Award for the management and care of its many historic properties, including the recently completed restoration of the Corbin Building in the Financial District and three landmark subway stations across the City.
“The awards are a celebration of preservation leaders and outstanding restoration projects throughout the City,” said Peg Breen, President of The New York Landmarks Conservancy. “It’s a joyous evening as we salute great work and great people.”
The award to 14 Penn Plaza on West 34th Street recognizes the ownership of this 1910 office building, which undertook restoration of the lobby, which is not a designated landmark, to upgrade and improve the systems while bringing back the historic appearance.
Under the direction of architects Swanke Hayden Connell, years of modernizations and insensitive alterations have been removed, replaced with marble, decorative plaster, hand-painted finishes, and custom bronze lighting fixtures that match the original.
The McKim, Mead and White Renaissance Revival building at 998 Fifth Avenue was the first luxury apartment house on upper Fifth Avenue, and the onetime home of Lucy G. Moses. A century after its completion, Walter B. Melvin Architects oversaw the restoration.
The limestone façade has been cleaned and repaired, the lost copper tile hip roof replaced, and the terra cotta cornice restored, while a new system was installed to allow future owners ease of access to perform inspections and maintenance.
Centennial Memorial Temple, the Salvation Army’s New York headquarters, houses an impressive auditorium behind a monumental Art Deco façade. For the first time in its 80-year history, the theater has been restored with repairs to the travertine walls and ornamental plaster ceilings, new textiles, and modern theater systems, while the façade and entry stair were renovated. Kostow Greenwood Architects directed the project.
A former CBJ Snyder school building houses the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, which focuses on Latino arts and culture on the Lower East Side. The 1898 Dutch neo-Gothic structure features the rich ornamentation and inventive design typical of Snyder’s work.
After years of neglect and some vandalism, the building has been taken back to its original appearance. Superstructures Engineers and Architects prepared and oversaw the scope of work, which included repair and replacement of terra cotta window surrounds, cleaning and repair of masonry facades, and replacement of wood windows.
The Tuckahoe marble façade and copper pyramidal roof of the Home Life Insurance Company Building across Broadway from City Hall Park were much in need of repair, when an inspection project by Swanke Hayden Connell Architects grew into a restoration.
Elements of the delicate façade of the 1894 “skyscraper” were cleaned, repaired, and sometimes replaced. 5,000 s/f of new copper were needed for the roof, although some of the decorative ridge rolls and dormers were reused.
Sculptor Donald Judd owned, lived in, and worked in the neo-Grec SoHo cast iron building at 101 Spring Street for 26 years until his death in 1994. His dream to restore the deteriorated façade of 101 Spring has been realized.
As the interior is being adapted for use as the Judd Foundation, a house museum celebrating Judd, the 1870 exterior, which is nearly two-thirds glazing, has been restored by a team led by Walter B. Melvin Architects. The cast iron elements were inspected, nearly 1,300 treated or recast, and then re-installed. New, more energy-efficient wood windows match the originals.
The austere neo-Grec brownstone façade of Mayer-Loeb House is in stark contrast to the exuberant and immaculate Aesthetic era interior.
The replacement of an inappropriate ribbon window with historic double-hung wood windows is just one part of the scope. At the interior, elaborate woodwork was polished and conserved; original encaustic tile floors restored; leaded glass repaired; and lost features such as polychrome plaster moldings, wall coverings, textiles, and millwork recreated based on physical and documentary evidence, to create a tapestry-like unity of spaces in a project that took the owners and architect David Scott Parker a decade to complete.
