Second Time Is the Charm for Fulton Market Landmarks Approval

The revised rendering of the Fulton Market Building, presented to the Landmarks Preservation Commission late last month. The commissioners favored the redesign for what it said was its better sensitivity to the building's history, its use of plainer building materials and other design features. Rendering: SHoP Architects

Calling it “mall-like” and “white bread,” city Landmarks Preservation commissioners in April panned the Howard Hughes Corp.'s planned exterior remake of the Fulton Market Building in the South Street Seaport.  But it was a different story when they returned to the commission in late June. SHoP Architects' redesigns for the building were called “extremely good for the Seaport” and won unanimous approval.

The project is part of the developer’s plan for a multiplex theater, and the addition of storefronts with new signage and ground-floor lighting on all four sides of the building.  The Fulton Market Building, reconstructed in 1983, occupies the entire block bordered by Fulton, Beekman, Front and South streets.

At the initial hearing in April, the commissioners said they wanted to see a plan that is less “uniform”—without any projecting elements or irregularities to break it up—and more sensitive to the building’s history and the “messy grittiness of the Seaport.”

They did not like the four-foot installation spaces in the building’s second-floor windows, and bemoaned the loss of what remained of the 1950s market stalls on South Street side—the only part of the previous building that had not been demolished.

With his revised design, SHoP Architects’ Greg Pasquarelli was rewarded with a very different reception.

“I think it’s been extremely responsive to our comments, and I think this design brings back some of the variety that we expect to see from a real working market,” said Commissioner Margery Perlmutter.

Here are some of the changes Pasquarelli presented at the hearing.

• The original canopy, made with corrugated metal panels, will remain on the second floor of South and Beekman streets.

• Concrete (a more “gritty” material, according to Pasquarelli) will be used as the base of the storefronts on South Street instead of a shiny black granite.

• South Street will have storefronts that better reflect the scale of the fish stalls that formerly occupied the space. Instead of a single, united storefront, those storefronts will be segmented into what looks like more of a series of “glass garage doors,” Pasquarelli said.

• Also on South Street, the first floor, which now contains stall fronts set back behind columns, will be built out to line up with the facade of the building’s upper floors.

• The building’s second floor space will be much more developed than before, with a colored fabric, or scrim, in the installation spaces. While the rendering displayed at the hearing showed the spaces lit up in pink, the colors will often change, according to Pasquarelli. “We want to take a kind of metal mesh and hang it behind the window, and then we can just cast a light on it,” Pasquarelli said. “When you look through the window, it won’t feel dead.”

• Entrances will be added onto Beekman Street to bring some life to that side of the building.

• The old bluestone pavers on the sidewalk surrounding the building will be replaced with new ones.