A Stunning Makeover at the Battery

By Etta Sanders

It was once the Grand Central of ferry terminals. But for half a century after the ferries stopped running from the Battery Maritime Building, it has stood inconspicuously at the southern edge of Manhattan under coats of dull green paint.

		This month the city will complete a nearly $60 million exterior renovation of the Downtown landmark, restoring the turn-of-the-20th-century facade to its original decorative splendor. “It is as close to what it looked like in 1908 as is possible,” said Charles Silverman, vice president of Tishman Construction, the company that did the renovation.
The city hopes to turn the four-story structure into a public food market, although the agency will also consider other public uses. Last month the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), which oversaw the building’s restoration, gave the first tours of the interior to prospective developers. The EDC is accepting development proposals until May 10.

The envisioned food market would be centered in the 10,000-square-foot, light-splashed great hall with its 30-foot ceiling topped by a peaked skylight running the length of the room. The stained glass panel that lays below the skylight may also be restored.

The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park has expressed interest in converting the second and third floors, currently divided into small offices, into a food education facility, according to the EDC. The roof, with a panoramic view of New York Harbor that sweeps from the Williamsburg Bridge to Hoboken, could be a restaurant. It is now covered with gravel, barren except for a worn wooden picnic table.

Two of the three ferry slips are currently used for ferries to Governors Island. The city is looking for a private ferry company to run ferries to Brooklyn.

Designed by the architectural firm of Walker and Morris, the Battery Maritime Building was built in 1908 in the ornate industrial Beaux-Arts style. A twin terminal on the site where the new Staten Island Ferry terminal now stands was destroyed by fire.

The street level of the Battery Maritime Building opened onto the three ferry slips where cars and horses were loaded. Passengers boarded the boats from the second floor. On the South Street side, a 256-foot, second-story outdoor veranda led directly to the platform of the elevated subway. But the building’s days as a bustling transit hub were relatively brief. By 1938, with the construction of bridges and tunnels, the ferries stopped running. The Department of Transportation took over the building for offices. A fourth floor was added in 1957. Little was done in the way of maintenance, and the exterior, including the windows, Silverman said, was covered in green paint.

In 2001 a team of construction workers, architects and restorers began the renovation. They initially thought the building was constructed mostly of copper, mistaking the green paint for an aging patina. As they explored beneath the surface they discovered a cornucopia of materials—cast iron, steel, zinc, stucco and ceramic tile.

Since only black and white photographs pre-dated the green paint, the restoration team also faced the challenge of determining the building’s original colors. Restorers took small chips from various parts of the building and, using microscopic analysis, discovered a rainbow beneath the green. The stucco walls are canary yellow and salmon pink. Wooden doorframes are bordered with ceramic tile in parrot green, cherry red and royal blue. The original corrugated glass panes of the windows are framed in dark ochre. The arched ceiling of the veranda is decorated in a herringbone pattern of tan Guastavino tile. Half a dozen six-foot-high, carved copper seals of the city of New York hang beside the ferry slips.

The exterior steel and cast iron cladding was removed in more than 11,000 pieces and refurbished while the substructure was repaired. “It was like taking the skin off your body, repairing the bones, and putting the skin back on,” Silverman said.

The structure beneath the once-colorful facade was so heavily decayed that had it been left alone for just five or 10 more years, the building would not have been salvageable, he said. “It would have been a major loss.”

The renovation of the nearly century-old terminal, he said, “will make this building live another 75 to 100 years.”