'Stand Out But Not Look Out of Place': New Building for Historic Tribeca Block

Until its recent demolition, a 2-story building, built in 1954, stood at the corner of Walker and Church streets, flanked on each side by the cast-iron warehouse at 32-34 Walker Street. At right, a rendering of the 6-story residential building approved for the corner by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Credit: The Turett Collaborative and SOMA 

For as long as anyone can remember, a two-story building—most recently the popular bar Belle Reve—has stood at the northeast corner of Church and Walker streets, flanked by an L-shaped 1868 cast-iron warehouse that was home to Paramount/Boltex Textile Company [1], the last of Tribeca’s textile wholesalers. Purchased by a developer in 2023, the building is now set for residential conversion, connected to a new building that will occupy the former Belle Reve lot and dramatically transform that very visible corner in the Tribeca East Historic District. 

What will appear as separate buildings on the outside at 32-34 Walker Street will actually contain five sprawling apartments above the first-floor storefront and lobby: Four 3,765-square-foot single-story units topped by a 7,155-square-foot duplex penthouse (exterior spaces included) on the sixth floor.

The former Belle Reve building is now demolished and roughly 14 months of construction is expected to begin in the next few weeks.

Designing a building that is contemporary yet fits in with its historic neighbors is no easy architectural feat. In December 2023, the Landmarks Preservation Commission sent back the first design, by the firm SOMA [2], for a reworking. Tribeca-based Turett Collaborative [3] took over the job of both altering the design and creating the building’s interiors. Last June the commission approved the revision, which included changes to the columns, cornice detailing, and window treatments among other modifications.  

Marrying the two cast-iron facades—one facing Walker Street, the other on Church—with a new limestone-clad building between the two “is almost like threading a needle,” said James Saisakorn, the Turett Collaborative architect who is managing the project. “How much do we really want to acknowledge the adjacent facades? And how much do we really want to construct our own thing? It needs to have its own integrity, to look like a separate building yet also be part of a larger whole.”

“We wanted the building to stand out enough so that people notice it,” said the firm’s principal and founder Wayne Turett, “but it isn’t standing out so much that it looks out of place.”

Turett, a long-time Tribeca resident, lives across Walker Street and a few doors down from where the new building will soon rise. “It’s pretty amazing that we’re building a building that’s in my neighborhood, that I can be proud of,” he said. “A building that isn’t destroying the fabric of Tribeca.”