This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.
Long Island City Powerhouse, originally uploaded by plemeljr
One of my favorite buildings in Long Island City is being torn apart. The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) Power House is being picked apart to make way for condos. The iconic smokestacks are being dismantled, as is the wop floor window galleries. What’s best worst about this are the yuppie gloating going on:
- The smoke stacks are coming down. No ifs ands or buts. 3 months give or take
- It will be condos, aprox 400 units averaging 1,000 sq ft
- There will be retail and community space (art gallery, most likely)
- There is and will be no landmark of those buildings
- It was NOT designed by Mckim, Meade and White (if you have proof it was, email me, otherwise, lets drop it) (ed: he is so wrong)
- It will retain the majority of the plant
- There WILL be a section on QueensWest.com for the building once I get confirmation on the name of the building.
- It will, in my opinion, be a great edition to the area
Besides being highly illiterate, using the worst commenting software known to man, and being generally assy, they are dead wrong about the building not being built by McKim Mead & White. Apparently my quick analysis of the development of the property wasn’t far off. The developer, Cheskel Schwimmer – vice president of Brooklyn-based CGS Builders, has pegged the cost to be around $100 million. I estimated around $60-70 million and the profit to be not substantial – but I could be wrong – they are using much more of the building then I assumed (four times more).
The New York Times also had a story about the smokestacks:
Despite the hubbub over the apparent demise of the smokestacks, the developer of the project said on Friday that he had no such plans. “We have no intention to take down the smokestacks,” said Cheskel Schwimmer, vice president of CGS Builders, a Brooklyn firm. “We want to try to preserve the smokestacks as much as possible.”
The intention behind applying for the permit, he said, was to get permission to remove small pieces of the smokestacks and incorporate them into the design.
To that end, Mr. Schwimmer and the architect he hired, Karl Fischer, have produced a rendering that includes a cube of glass resting on top of the existing building and attached to the smokestacks, which would actually become part of the new building and be equipped with windows. “We will both reinforce the smokestacks and create good living space within the building,” Mr. Schwimmer said.
For the time being, he and Mr. Fischer, who was the architect for the renovated Gretsch Building in Williamsburg, are working with the city’s departments of buildings and city planning to get the cube design approved. In the meantime, it seems that the smokestacks, beacons of Queens past, will continue to point their brown spires into the sky.
Yes, is is that Karl Fischer, the architect who is overseeing the conversion of the Gretsch Building in Williamsburg. So I’m not really hoping for the best. So I guess it is still inconclusive whether or not the stacks stay, I guess we will see in the next 3-6 months.
I find it to be quite interesting that there are numerous period accounts identifying MMW as architects of penn station and discussing the LIC plant, but not associating MMW with the plant as well. I have yet to find any period source that identifies MMW as architects of the plant. What is the evidence on which you base your smug and steadfast conclusion?
And unlike you, I can rebut your assertions definitively and point to unquestionable evidence — whether the stacks are staying is not inconclusive. Take a look at them, they’re over 1/4 down.
Instead of engaging in the cyberspace equivalent of talking behind people’s back, why don’t you state your opinion of the queenswest.com board users on that board so that they may debate your misperceptions of reality and chicken-s**t name calling.
Yes, yes… the stacks are coming down; you see this, I see this, everyone sees this. As for my sourcing McKim Mead and White as the architects for the PRR Powerhouse, check out AIA Guide to New York City by Norval White and Elliot Willensky published by Three Rivers Press in 2000. The level of angst I’ve received for using basic library skills to source McKim Mead and White as the architect is pretty astounding. Even if they did not design the powerhouse, the stacks and the integrity of the building should remain. Not picked apart and bastardized.
And the matter of talking behind your back? Come on, this is a fully public website, where anyone can comment on my articles without having to register. I already am registered on too many sites to bother with registering on another.
But thank you for reading my website.
I found a more satisfying reference courtesy Chris Gray of the NY Times:
‘Scientific American, April 7, 1906, p. 285 et seq., “Pennsylvania Railroad’s Extension to New York and Long Island”:
“The power house building, designed by Messrs. McKim, Mead & White, is located on the Long Island shore….”‘
I can understand preserving the powerplant structure, which is currently the plan (3 story base is slated to remain), but the stacks? In my opinion they are not the type of vestige of LIC’s industrial past that can coexist aestheticaly with its increasingly residential present and future. The gantries and Pepsi sign on the other hand strike the proper balance.
I think that the blend of the modernesque glass tower that will replace the stacks, and the underlying powerplant structure will echo this balance nicely.