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Landmarks
Request by 2 Park Avenue to renovate and replace a storefront on 2 Park Avenue that deviates from the building’s existing master plan.
WHEREAS, 2 Park Avenue is an individually Landmarked building located on the west side of Park Avenue and has façades fronting Park Avenue as well as East 32nd and East 33rd Streets; and
WHEERAS, The building consists of 28 stories with a double height ground floor with retail storefronts on all three of its façades; and
WHEREAS, The Park Avenue façade consists of nine storefront bays symmetrically designed around a central opening; and
WHEREAS, The 32nd and 33rd Street façades consist of five bays each, marked by four narrow windows centered between two wider bays; and
WHEREAS, The building was designed in 1926 by Ely Jacques Khan, one of New York's foremost architects of the first half of the twentieth century; and
WHEREAS, The building, completed in 1928, represents one of the City's finest examples of Art Deco architecture from the period and remains the architect's premier effort in the Modern style; and
WHEREAS, Khan promoted the heavy use of terra cotta to introduce a variety and richness to the texture of the building's façade, breaking from traditional styles of architecture; and
WHEREAS, Khan employed the use of bricks of multiple different colors to clad the building's façade, in an effort to celebrate and reflect on the ideas of German and Dutch Expressionism; and
WHEREAS, The building's owner has created a master plan for the maintenance of the buildings nineteen total storefront bays; and
WHEERAS, The current design of the storefront occupying the eastern-most bays of the 32nd Street façade do not currently conform to the master plan; and
WHEREAS, The eastern-most bays of the 32nd Street façade housed the restaurant Artisanal for many years and were purposefully designed as an homage to the famous Parisian restaurant named La Coupole; and
WHEREAS, The existing storefront rests on a marble plinth and consists of five pairs of yellow painted steel and glass in-swing doors flanked by two pairs of similarly designed out-swing doors with fixed glass panels on either side; and
WHEREAS, All fenestration is located under two rows of transom glass and the entire storefront is covered by a cloth canopy; and
WHEREAS, The existing storefront has been severely compromised by water damage over the life of the previous tenancy; and
WHEREAS, The Applicant has thoroughly demonstrated that the existing storefront's condition is inadequate and cannot safely be used in its current state by a new tenant; and
WHEREAS, The Applicant has sufficiently shown that the existing storefront requires a full replacement, as opposed to a mere restoration; and
WHEREAS, The Applicant proposes to make all efforts to replicate the existing storefront's design, and seeks to replace the existing storefront with a near identical steel and glass system using similar materials to create similar sightlines; and
WHEREAS, The Applicant proposes to repair the storefront's marble plinth as necessary and to replicate the exact layout of inswing and outswing steel frame doors with yellow painted wood panels and thermally insulated glass under a cloth canopy; and
WHEREAS, The Applicant recognizes that the proposed plan does not comply with the existing master plan covering the rest of the building's retail bays of which it is exempt; and
WHEREAS, CB5 recognizes that while the design, which is to be replicated under the current proposal, deviates from the master plan, it is nonetheless appropriate and contextual and conforms with the building's overall spirit; therefore be it
RESOLVED, Community Board Five recommends approval of the Applicant's request to renovate and replace a storefront on the 32nd Street façade of 2 Park Avenue.