1. September 2023
The covered pedestrian space at 60 Wall Street in 2013 (Photo: John Hill/World-Architects)
The New York City Planning Commission has approved plans for the renovation of 60 Wall Street, a 1989 office building designed by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo with a striking Postmodern lobby.
The approval took place in a meeting on August 21, when the commission voted unanimously to let the owners, GIC Singapore and Paramount Group, proceed with plans to renovate the 55-story office building in Manhattan's Financial District. Paramount Group, acting as developer, is working with KPF on a design that includes “a completely transformed podium exterior, lobbies, and public atrium” that aims to “create a Class-A tenant environment and breathe new life into the civic neighborhood of Wall Street.”
Legally, 60 Wall Street is a strange beast. The building is not a landmark, but since it was approved in the mid-1980s with air rights from a landmark directly across the street (55 Wall Street: built in 1841, added to in 1910, designated 1965), any changes to the exterior need to be approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). But the same does not apply to the lobby, a privately owned public space (POPS) that is something like an Egyptian hypostyle hall made from stone and mirrored mosaics; it is not an interior landmark (NYC has distinct landmarks for exteriors and interiors), nor is it covered by the special provision that requires LPC review for the exterior.
So, while KPF needed to maintain the exterior's “harmonious relationship” with 55 Wall Street in the eyes of the LPC, which it did through the articulation of the colonnade, it could reconfigure the lobby space in whatever way the client demanded. Although the LPC sent KPF back to the proverbial drawing board following a review of the project in September 2022, it approved KPF's revised, “harmonious” design in January of this year, paving the way for the planning commission's review and approval of the overarching project earlier this month.
Preservationists in and beyond New York City have been trying for years to save the distinctive POPS, urging the LPC to designate it as an interior landmark. While such a designation is rare in New York, it has happened already with two projects designed by Kevin Roche, both steps from the United Nations: the landscaped atrium of the Ford Foundation Building, completed in 1967 and designated in 1997; and the first floor interiors of the United Nations Hotel, a PoMo feast of mirrors built in 1976 and designated in 2017.
The planning commission's approval does not bar the LPC from making a similar designation for 60 Wall Street's lobby. At the time of the September 2022 review, in fact, the LPC indicated its research department was studying the lobby for possible landmarking. But with September 2023 — a full year of research, in other words — upon us, and with planning approval in hand, time is extremely tight for such a designation to have its most valuable impact: saving one of New York City's few publicly accessible spaces with Postmodern distinction.