A Museum Worthy of Its Name: The Renovation of the Museum of the City of New York

Often overlooked on Manhattan’s famed “Museum Row,” the 80-year-old institution gets a facelift.

By Alex Padalka

New York City’s official chronicler on Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street was originally designed in 1929 as a grand mansion suitable for its subject matter.

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The city’s wealthiest residents funded the construction of the five-story Museum of the City of New York in Georgian Revival style, with a grand entrance facing the world’s most famous city park. Mayor James Walker laid the cornerstone for the new building, thus creating, with the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the other end, what became known as Museum Mile.

And then, as new museums popped up in between and the city went through some of its worst economic times, the museum was quietly forgotten. Half a century later, it badly needed repairs.

In the 1980s, New York’s Polshek Partnership Architects proposed a master plan for a massive expansion and an upgrade of the building’s interiors, and Marlton, N.J.-based Hill International was selected as the construction manager. But plans changed, and the work was put on hold.

It wasn’t until 2006, under a powerful mayor, that the museum’s first substantial renovation since the ’30s began.

“Since I started working on this project, I’ve gotten married, had two kids, and the first one just had his graduation from college,” says Timothy Hartung, Polshek’s project manager, laughing quietly.

While the original ’80s plans called for a significantly larger expansion, the current $80 million, three-phase work is no less ambitious in scope. And, all the work on 90,000 sq ft of renovation and a 23,000-sq-ft expansion is happening while the museum stays open for staff and visitors.

At $80 million and covering three phases, the renovation and expansion of the museum will see the reworking of 90,000 sq ft and the addition of 23,000 sq ft of space. (Image courtesy of Polshek Partnership Architects)

The $22 million phase one of the project, completed last year, included renovation of the Fifth Avenue entrance and its entry court, which was previously covered in shrubbery and is now a programmable space that is frequently rented out for functions separate from the museum.

Inside, the team restored the lobby, adding a storefront and new openings,but leaving intact and restoring a grandiose marble spiral staircase.

“I don’t think we could have rebuilt one of these,” says Michael Brothers, the project executive with Hill. Hartung adds that the staircase “is one of the most sought-after post-marriage ceremony spots in the city.”

Testing for structural integrity as it went along, the team did make an opening underneath the stairwell, to connect the lobby to phase one’s most outstanding feature: a 23,000-sq-ft addition that includes the museum’s first climate-controlled gallery as well as, in its basement, a climate-controlled storage center, complete with a vault, for the museum’s rarest and most fragile pieces.

The new wing was finished just in time for this year’s 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the region, and now houses a model replica of his ship Half Moon. There is also an extensive collection of manuscripts and artifacts from the era, in a comprehensive program coordinated with the government of the Netherlands (Hudson’s employer).

The exhibit has the feel of a tasteful archeological presentation, with dim lights reflecting off of wood floors and additional lamps highlighting the collection’s pieces.

But a museum that prides itself on covering not just what was, but what is—such as hip hop’s influence on fashion, to name one recent exhibit—still needs more versatility and an update to the aesthetics of the 21st Century. Polshek Partners had previously integrated such aesthetics into its projects, at the Rose Center at the Museum of Natural History and the new foyer at the Brooklyn Museum, and so it was keenly aware of what was needed at the museum.

The new building is glass.

“Because of the shows, the whole glass building has been covered with vinyl,” Hartung says. “Right now people don’t realize that it’s a new building because it’s so dark in there.”

The 23,000-sq-ft addition will include the museum’s first-ever climate-controlled gallery. (Image courtesy of Polshek Partnership Architects)

The building was designed to mimic glass garden rooms, known as conservatories, popular as extensions to mansions at the beginning of the 20th Century. “At the same time it’s a modern expression, able to represent a new era in the history of the museum,” Hartung says.

In the basement of the new wing are two new cooling towers and a new 500-kw generator for emergency power.

“I told the museum, ‘If there’s an outage, you can power the block,’” Ally says.

During phase two for the south wing and phase three for the north wing, scheduled for completion in 2010 and 2013, respectively, the team will complete installing a new HVAC system, introducing temperature and humidity controls for the first time and getting rid of the unsightly mishmash of air-conditioning units now protruding from every window on the exterior.

The windows themselves will be completely replaced, following guidelines for a landmarked building, as will some of the brick both inside and outside the building. The galleries are being reconfigured to free exhibit space on the bottom three floors and to centralize all administrative and curatorial offices on the top two floors, which required the museum’s staff to take a close look at its holdings and determine those suitable for offsite storage.

A new stairwell will connect the administrative floors, and new skylights in the slanted roof will bring natural light to the fifth floor right through an attic, now freed up from its 10,000-gallon water tank replaced by pumps. A section of the attic will also house mechanical equipment.

The museum wanted the new addition to connect to the existing structure. (Image courtesy of Polkshek Partnership Architects)

The team is aiming for a LEED silver rating on phase two picking up points for natural lighting, low-VOC finishes, low-emitting light fixtures, onsite air quality monitoring, and recycling of 75 % of construction debris.

“In the first month, we did 84 %, and we will be ahead again,” Ally says.

But going for LEED has meant an added layer of complexity to the project already needing daily coordination to maintain the museum’s operations.

“There’s a lot more paperwork, and all the materials have to be reviewed by a LEED consultant,” Brothers says. “Product specification and product tracking are a big part of it. We have monthly meetings on this, and we have a push-and-pull approach to it, because we’re not going to put something in that’s not going to work.”

Fortunately, both Polshek and Hill have been involved with the project from the start in the 1980s.

“It’s been great working with Hill,” Hartung says. “It’s rare these days that on a project that runs this long that you keep working with the same contractor, which has been beneficial for the project.”