The restrained exterior elevation of the house, originally designed by Paul Rudolph in 1966-1967—purchased by Halston in 1974, and now a home for Tom Ford. Photo: Homedsgn.com
AN URGENT PRESERVATION UPDATE:
A proposal was submitted at yesterday’s Community Board 8 Landmarks Committee Meeting by Steve Blatz of Steve Blatz Architect to alter the existing façade of 101 East 63rd street, known as the Hirsch Residence and also the Halston Residence.
A copy of the presentation submitted at yesterday’s meeting is available for download here.
The Community Board 8 Landmarks Committee & What Happened
The Landmarks Committee of Community Board 8 reviews Certificate of Appropriateness applications, designations, and related matters for the individual landmarks and buildings within the six historic districts in the Board 8 area in New York City. This committee meets every month on the Monday before the Full Board meeting, unless otherwise noted.
An archived copy of the Public Hearing agenda for Monday February 13, 2023 can be found here.
According to our sources, the committee voted to reject the proposed changes.
What’s Next - How you can help!
Now, it will go before the full Community Board meeting tomorrow night.
The Full Board of CB8 meets monthly on the third Wednesday of each month (tomorrow!), reviewing recommendations made by committees and voted on them for final approval. Each meeting starts with public session, where constituents have 3 minutes to comment on issues coming to the board or express any issues or concerns effecting the community.
Additionally, a list of the CB8 Board Members can be found here.
What are the proposed changes to the Hirsch / Halston Residence?
According to the presentation submitted at yesterday’s meeting (available for download here) the proposal is to make changes to the façade at the recessed entrance to the building.
The plan of the existing recessed front entrance. Drawing from the CB8 presentation.
The plan of the proposed shallower front entrance. Note the hole cut in the existing façade for a new hose bib. Drawing from the CB8 presentation.
Note the entrance door is removed and pulled forward two feet. Drawing from the CB8 presentation.
Rudolph’s rendering of the Hirsch Residence façade published in the New York Times on February 19, 1967.
How to make an ‘Entrance’ - according to Rudolph
The effect of this change will remove Rudolph’s original intention to recess and obscure the residential entrance from the street.
In many of his projects, Rudolph intentionally recessed the building entrance so that visitors had to discover where to access the world he had created beyond. He would suggest as a clue, through a series of peeled ‘reveals’ or an oversized opening, that the entrance could be found if a passerby were to explore them further.
Several examples of this are the Sarasota High School, the Yale Art & Architecture building (now Rudolph Hall) and our own headquarters at the Modulightor building - shown below:
In the case of the Halston Residence, not only will the relocated door inappropriately align with the structure of the floor above giving it a flattened appearance, but the recessed lighting above the door will be altered, changing the appearance of the façade at night.
Ezra Stoller’s photo illustrating the deep shadows cast over the recessed door which will be lost if the door is pulled forward.
Who has the final say - the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission
After the Full Board Meeting of Community Board 8, the proposal will ultimately go before the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission on February 28, 2023 for a ‘certificate of appropriateness’
You can download a copy of the LPC calendar showing it as item #13 on the agenda here.
The project number is LPC-23-07040 and the public is encouraged to attend and speak out against this proposal.
SAVE THE DATE!
Here’s how to attend the public hearing so you can voice your opposition to this proposal:
WHEN
On Tuesday, February 28, 2023, at 9:30 AM
WHERE
The public hearing room at 1 Centre Street, 9th Floor, Borough of Manhattan, and the meeting will also be live-streamed and open to public participation by teleconference.
The final order and estimated times for each application will be posted on the Landmarks Preservation Commission website the Friday before the hearing. Please note that the order and estimated times are subject to change. An overflow room is located outside of the primary doors of the public hearing room.
What if I can’t go in person?
Virtual attendance by the public is encouraged given the continuing presence of COVID and the desire to facilitate social distancing. Any person requiring reasonable accommodation in order to participate in the hearing or attend the meeting should contact the Landmarks Commission no later than five (5) business days before the hearing or meeting. Members of the public not attending in person can observe the meeting on LPC’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/nyclpc and may testify on particular matters by joining the meeting using either the Zoom app or by calling in from any phone. Specific instructions on how to observe and testify, including the meeting ID and password, and the call-in number, will be posted on the agency’s website, under the “Hearings” tab https://www1.nyc.gov/site/lpc/hearings/hearings.page, on the Monday before the public hearing.
So - How did we get here?
A lot of publications mentioned Tom Ford’s 2019 purchase and his plan to restore the interiors at the time. For those of you who want to know more, we are republishing excerpts from our previous blog posts below:
A House with a History
Paul Rudolph designed the original residence at 101 East 63rd street for Mr. Alexander Hirsch in 1966. He created a Modernist oasis for his client, an intensely private person who wanted a place to escape to while still being in the heart of Manhattan. As Rudolph later described the project in Sibyl Moholy-Nagy’s 1970 book, The Architecture of Paul Rudolph:
A world of its own, inward looking and secretive, is created in a relatively small volume of space in the middle of New York City. Varying intensities of light are juxtaposed and related to structures within structures. Simple materials (plaster, paint) are used, but the feeling is of great luxuriousness because of the space. The one exposed façade reveals the interior arrangement of volumes by offsetting each floor and room in plan and section.
The house later went from being a private refuge to a celebrity hot spot known for its notorious parties when it was sold to the fashion designer Halston in the 1970’s. Halston himself spoke about the space in a documentary about his life that was featured on CNN:
I’m Halston and this is my home. The architect was Paul Rudolph and the day I saw it, I bought it. Its the only real modern house built in the city of New York since the second world war. Its like living in a three dimensional sculpture.
For more information about the design of the original house, you can find drawings and photos of it on our project page here.
A Buyer as Famous as the House
As we reported in a previous blog post in March of 2019, the house was sold to fashion designer Tom Ford after being on the market for a number of years. The sale, first reported in an article in Women’s Wear Daily after being the subject of rumors for a few weeks, was reported across social media and the design community. Articles appeared in Garage, Vogue, GQ, Mansion Global, the Daily Mail and New York Times.
Halston had hired Rudolph to renovate the space when he bought it. Wall to wall grey carpet, mirrored and Plexiglas furniture and chain-mail curtains were installed as a result. Members of the design community were pleased to learn that Tom Ford intended to restore the interior to the glamour that many remembered.
A Restoration, or Renovation?
Shortly before the 2019 sale was announced, we were approached by Mr. Ford’s architect, Atmosphere Design Group, to obtain copies of Rudolph’s original drawings. We were told ‘the client’ wanted to restore the interiors.
We asked the architect to consider consulting with the Paul Rudolph Institute for Modern Architecture during the design process to ensure the design was faithful to Mr. Rudolph’s original vision. They said they would consider it and were never heard from again. Given the architect is generally known for Mr. Ford’s retail store design, we were concerned when we learned a demolition permit was issued in August, 2019.
Following the CNN documentary, Netflix announced that it too was going to do a story about Halston and were scouting locations to use for filming. Netflix location scouts visited us in the Rudolph-designed apartment at Modulightor and we spoke to them about Mr. Ford’s proposed changes and they said they would call us after seeing the original home for themselves. That was followed by the New York Times publishing the Halston interior as #19 on its ‘25 Rooms that Influence the Way We Design’
As the iconic interior continued to be in the news, we waited to see what was being done to the space.
Then we got a call - “The space is gutted, Its unrecognizable.”
As we reported here in May, 2021 the proposed changes did not match the architect’s description to us.
At the time, the changes were interior modifications - the usual kitchen and bathroom updates. However we noted an ominous note on one of the drawings:
Note the garage door is dotted on the demolition plan, with a note calling for it to be replaced. Drawing by Atmosphere Design Group, from the NYC DOB.
Despite being in a landmark district - and signed off by the Landmark’s Commission as having no affect on the building exterior - the drawings showed the original garage door was planned to be removed and replaced.
Little did anyone know that less than two years later, Mr. Ford would submit plans to modify the facade of the landmark building.