Whole New Facade for 178 Smith
We love reveals! There was a ton of work going on at 178 Smith in August after it had been badly damaged in a fire. Earlier this week, Pardon Me for Asking noticed that the scaffolding had been taken down, revealing that the little yellow house has been replaced with a slightly taller brick building….
We love reveals! There was a ton of work going on at 178 Smith in August after it had been badly damaged in a fire. Earlier this week, Pardon Me for Asking noticed that the scaffolding had been taken down, revealing that the little yellow house has been replaced with a slightly taller brick building. PMFA thinks, “The result is much, much better than the original structure, which was a real eyesore. Most importantly, it is more contextual. It’s only a pity that the building has been ‘fedderized.’ ” What do you think? Check out the Property Shark “before” photo after the jump.
Against better advice, I’ll respopnd to a couple of questions/comments, having been the architect for the project. I hope most know that the owner of the building is a beloved couple to the neighborhood who owoned a drycleaning business on Court St for years. They had just retired when th efired occurred. They had very little money to rebuild the house and many people donated to the cause. Still they had to make some hard decisions, like the AC units. We pushed hard for unobtrusive ductless sytems to be installed but it was beyond their means. We had to maintain a substantial amount of the building structure to obtain approval for this work as an “alteration”, instead of a “new building”, saving much money. Therefore we did not have the freedom to raise floor levels, increase window heights, etc. We maintained the original proportion of the facade by setting back the area where the old residential stair ran up to the upper floors, on the left. (Not visible in the old photo.) This setback also served as a reasonable transition to the modern building on the corner. For me, the heartbreaking moment on the project was when the owner elected to put the roll down gates on the outside instead of behind the storefronts, as was planned. Obscured now is the simple, clean design of structural steel channels that frame the glass storefronts. Cost prevailed over aesthetics, but in this situation I have symapthy for the owners’ situation.
@Broadway,
New nail salon opened up directly across the street from there yesterday, $25 for mani/pedi is a great deal
http://jazzandjill.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/nails-cobblehill/
Better than the old for sure. Could’ve been much nicer — it’s fairly basic and, compared to the new building housing ecopolis nextdoor, disappointing — but as others have said above, could’ve been much worse so I’ll take this meh infill.
Also, I believe I saw signs up for the barbershop a few weeks ago, so my guess is the same barbershop that had _just_ moved into the old building a few weeks before the fire will be back.
WTF is up with the left side? They had a chance to rebuild that structure to fully fill in the space between the new building on the left and the one on the right. They should have used bigger windows, extended the cornice to cover the entire width of the building, and used mini splits instead of those horrible Fedders warts. Old jive-ass is fine, newly built jive-ass has no excuse. Makes you actually appreciate LPC for a change.
Heh, Pete, that was [major] sarcasm. I just don’t understand the demand for these nail places (new one on Smith/Pacific, new one on Court, and a fairly new one on Atlantic, not far from here). I hate nail salons, dollar stores, and Sleepy’s- it’s almost a disorder.
It does look a lot better despite the fedders vents.
Broadway,
It looked to me like a nail salon opening across the street from here – in that old splishy splashy laundry place. So you’ll be happy.
Decent, not stunning but a good infill facade to match up with it’s pretty neighbors, minus the Ohioan on the left.
At least it has a cornice.
Can’t Fedder’s come up with a freaking A/C that can match the facades of buildings. I can’t stand seeing the name Fedder’s anywhere…..and Fredrich is no better…..
They should be a brick color, it would look so much better.