By Brian J. Pape, AIA

Gansevoort Street (formerly Great Kill Road, renamed 1837) along with riverside Fort Gansevoort (1812), were named for Revolutionary War Gen. Peter Gansevoort (who died in 1812). The fort had to make way in 1851 for infill and freight yards for the shipping piers, according to the designation report for the Historic District. The residential and industrial area transformed over the years to a marketplace, then as a meatpacking district, and now as a shopping and dining magnet.

Home design company Restoration Hardware is developing a hotel, RH Guesthouse, at 55 Gansevoort Street in originally a 5-story store-and-loft building, aka 53-61 Gansevoort Street (built 1887 by Joseph M. Dunn), originally owned by the prominent Robert Goelet family, at the time of the widening of Gansevoort Street. 

Their rooftop addition had been the biggest sticking point for the LPC, but it now appears masked behind a restoration-style parapet. Note the unusual curved glass and sash corner windows, matching other historic style windows.

Developer/Owner: Restoration Hardware

Architect: Caroline Otto of TriBeCa-based Anderson Architects, and preservation consultant Jacqueline Peu-Duvallon.

Photo by Brian J. Pape, AIA

On the same block as RH Guesthouse is 63-65 Gansevoort, the one-story garage turned bar, on the right, and 69 Gansevoort, (ca. 1949) the one-story restaurant at the left, and each have orange mock-ups of their proposed additions on their roofs. Between is 67 Gansevoort (ca. 1887), neo-Grec French flats once owned by the John Jacob Astor family, a landowner of large parts of Manhattan. These rowhouses still dominate many of the short streets in the district.

63-65 Gansevoort Street’s original (ca. 1839) structure was completed by architect Albert K. Wilson and functioned as a garage for the Rubel Coal and Ice Company. Initial proposals to modify the existing structure were presented to the LPC in February 2021, but the heavy fenestrations and nearly vertical ‘skylights’ were too much out of character to pass muster, putting the project on hold.

Developer: William Gottlieb Real Estate

Architect: BKSK Architects

Photo by Brian J. Pape, AIA

69 Gansevoort is the current replacement for a four-story rowhouse and four-story rear tenement reduced to two stories and connected to the restaurant. Instead of taking an approach of restoring the street-front of rowhouses, the architect presented a setback addition design of striking contemporary style grid to the LPC in August, while keeping the restaurant front. It is still in redesign.

Architect: Bromley Caldari with Higgins Quasebarth & Partners Preservation Consultants

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