CHELSEA — The millionaire owner of the oldest home in the Chelsea Historic District must revamp plans that advocates and local officials maintained would destroy the house and create a “megamansion,” the city ruled.
At a public hearing Tuesday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission asked owner Ajoy Kapoor to modify already-revised plans for his house at 404 W. 20th St., between Ninth and 10th avenues, and return for a future hearing.
“Commissioners had concerns about the overall scale of the additions and asked that they be reduced to allow the historic volume of the building to be legible,” an LPC spokeswoman said Wednesday.
“Suggestions included reducing the height, maintaining the ridge line of the roof and setting back the top floor.”
Following a public hearing for the proposed alterations in April, at which the LPC asked Kapoor’s architect William Suk to modify the project, advocacy group Save Chelsea, Community Board 4, elected officials and others maintained the owner’s plans amounted to “facadism” — or destroying all but the facade of a historic building.
Tuesday’s decision, which came after the architect presented a new set of plans, “offered a glimmer of hope” for the 1830 landmarked home, Save Chelsea member David Holowka told DNAinfo New York.
A rendering filed with the LPC by Kapoor in March, left, compared with a rendering presented to the commission on Tuesday, right.
“I really wished they had insisted on preserving the side yard, but I was happy to see landmarks taking a harder look at things, and asking more probing questions, and responding to community input,” Holowka said.
The home’s side yard is one of just four left in all of Chelsea, and the only side yard located next to a wood-frame house, he noted.
Kapoor’s revised plan was “hardly different” from the first plan, aside from reducing some square footage at the top of the structure, Holowka added.
The plan presented on Tuesday would still “more than double” the size of the approximately 4,000-square-foot house, he added.
“In my opinion, the form and substance of the original house would still be lost in it,” he said.
In an email on Wednesday, Suk said revisions to the plan to date include removing a proposed fifth-floor addition and windows on the west side of the house; "significantly" reducing the proposed fourth-floor extension's volume; and having a fourth floor that slopes on both the front and the back, “in keeping with the historic roof style.”
“We listened closely yesterday and are continuing to modify our design, endeavoring to address the LPC’s worthy recommendations, following principles of restoration, sound engineering, life safety and code compliance to achieve a design appropriate to family life in the Chelsea Historic District,” Suk wrote.
Any design for the home “will fully restore the building’s front facade [and rebuild] the interior frame to make it a safe and functional family residence,” in addition to retaining and restoring elements like the home’s original fireplaces, he added.
Save Chelsea member Pamela Wolff on Wednesday called the commission’s ruling “a tiny step in the right direction.”
“All over Europe… there are buildings built [hundreds of years ago] that are rescued, and not torn down, and they are cherished, as this little building should be cherished,” she said.
“It certainly deserves it, and I think that that message may have gotten through a little bit to the commissioners.”
