Historic Coop Exterior Window Color
Our coop in PS is replacing the cornice and repainting the exterior windows. Currently, everything is black. The building is red brick and limestone. Landmarks is saying we have to go off-white with the cornice and LIGHT GREY for the windows. I can live with the cornice color marginally but am horrified at the thought…
Our coop in PS is replacing the cornice and repainting the exterior windows. Currently, everything is black. The building is red brick and limestone. Landmarks is saying we have to go off-white with the cornice and LIGHT GREY for the windows. I can live with the cornice color marginally but am horrified at the thought of such a radical change to the windows, which are quite lovely in black. Virtually every damn window in the entire neighborhood is black. What recourse do we have. I feel railroaded by the architectural engineering firm we’d retained to oversee the project. Thanks in advance for your advice!!
Apparently, the grandfathering of paint color only applies if you are just repainting and not if you are scraping the windows. Why, I don’t know. It makes very little sense to me to discourage coops from taking care of their buildings just to achieve the very first color of paint on windows that were repainted 15 colors after and which have been black for over 60 years. So, we’re apparently stuck just painting over cracked lead paint, or doing nothing or going light gray on a building that has a prominent black fire escape, red brick and limestone. Yuck!
i sincerely doubt your architect is “railroading” you, you probably just don’t like what they have to say. what lpc says goes, unless you have historic photos or someone to check out what the paint was originally…usually lpc has done that already.
You should hire a Landmark/Preservation consultant. LPC sometimes acts like they are doing things for no reason, but there usually is a reason. They have a huge list of things they look for. If they want your windows to be gray, you’ll be hard pressed to change their mind without using the proper consultants on your side.
Best way is to see if anyone in your neighborhood has any, or knows where the former owners or their descendants are, as people often take pictures of, or pictures of people standing in front of, their houses.
How would I go about finding a photograph of the building circa 1970? The tax photo is much earlier and takes 6 weeks to order.
But landmarking didn’t occur until later in the 20th century. Not at the time the houses were built. I think the only thing you have to show a landmarks board is that the color dates back to before landmarking. Not back to year it was built. Pre-landmarking features are grandfathered in. Isn’t that the case? For example how some buildings in Ft. Greene have the right to use their whole house or basement or garden level as a commercial space or office, because it was used or zoned as such before landmarking occurred. I’m no expert but it’s worth looking into, OP.
It’s my understanding black is the color that was painted later (in twentieth century maintenance). Careful scraping of the windows might reveal the original color underneath the layers of old black.
IMO black is almost always appropriate, and an argument can be made that despite not being original it is historic (that is, to what period to you dial back a renovation?)
I’d be interested in hearing the rationale for the gray color.
BTW: who is making the cornice? Is wood, metal or fiberglass?
Here’s the link for the photos:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/html/taxphotos/home.shtml
It will be interesting to see what you find out. There’s a large coop building at 115 Willow Street in landmarked Brooklyn Heights that went through window replacement this spring/summer and also went from black to grey. The grey looks much worse than the previous black but I assumed grey must have been historically accurate or Landmarks wouldn’t have OK’d it. Now I’m wondering if Landmarks insisted on the change…
I wouldn’t assume anything, like “must be” historically accurate. Find out exactly what the historical color has been on that building. If the windowframes were black before the neighborhood was landmarked, you can keep them black. But you’d have to find photos. You can get photos of buildings from NYC that were taken for tax purposes back in the 30’s (someone provide the link, or it can be found by searching Forum archives).