By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — The New York City Center, a neo-Moorish Midtown West landmark that was the city's first major performing arts center, will get a $75 million makeover.
The restorations and renovations, which the City Center was expected to announce Wednesday, will seek to accentuate the W. 55th Street building's Islamic motifs.
“We wanted to make sure that City Center is competitive into the 21st century,” the center’s president and chief executive, Arlene Shuler, told the New York Times.
Initially constructed in 1923 as a meeting space for the Ancient Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, the 2,750-seat center now hosts dance and theater companies as well as concerts.
Polshek Partnership Architects, a firm with renovations at the Brooklyn Museum and Carnegie Hall among its credits, will carry out the enhancements, according to the Times.
“It’s a venue that is so loved, so whatever we did to enhance that wonderful, quirky building, we wanted it to still be City Center,” Polshek partner Duncan Hazard told the Times.
City Center’s ties to former Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia play an important part in its role in the hearts of longtime New Yorkers.
LaGuardia and City Council President Newbold Morris rescued the building from destruction after it fell to city ownership in 1943, transforming it into Manahttan's first major performance space. LaGuardia himself held the baton during a special opening concert by the New York Philharmonic.
To honor that heritage, Polshek’s plans will offer contemporary adjustments to the old design elements, which are “heavily based on intricate geometries,” Hazard told the Times.
Nonetheless, Polshek aims to correct perceived limitations in the space’s current layout, according to the Times. Most notably, they will try to provide a better view of the main stage from many seats, and improve access for the disabled.
The renovations will be split between two periods, April through September of 2010 and mid-March through October 2011. The property is roughly three-quarters of the way toward its capital fundraising goal of $57.2 million.
The city has contributed more than 35.6 million to the fundraising goal.
