N ew Yorkers familiar with the Drill Hall at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue only from art and antique fairs will no doubt be surprised, on September 18, to see the 55,000-square-foot hall empty of booths and draping. In their place will be 10 motorcycles screaming around, leaving fluorescent skid marks, in a performance/ installation work called “Greeting Card,” by the New York-based artist Aaron Young. Goodbye, august military hall; hello, contemporary art venue.

The Seventh Regiment Armory Conservancy, which in 2001 was chosen by New York State to restore the 128-year-old building, took over management of the site last November. This fall, the Conservancy is planning several events, including “Greeting Card,” that will reintroduce New Yorkers to the Armory, now called the Park Avenue Armory and Drill Hall, as a contemporary art space, and also share some of the goals of the restoration.

“Greeting Card,” which is being co-presented by the Armory and the Art Production Fund, will run from September 18 to 23. On October 3, an exhibition about the history of the building will open. In the Mary Divver Room — once a reception room for women, designed by the Herter Brothers — four hanging screens will show films, curated by Nina Gray and designed by the graphic design firm Pentagram, that highlight different themes in the Armory’s history, including military ceremonies, sports, arts and entertainment, and parties.

Included in the film are television clips of people lining up on Park Avenue to see Rebecca Robertson, said.

A series of lectures, beginning on September 25 and continuing throughout the fall, will address other aspects of social and art history related to the Armory, from the social and political dynamics of the Gilded Age, to the interior design of Louis Comfort Tiffany, who designed the Veterans Room when he was only 30. Other rooms in the building were designed by Stanford White, then only 26, and Candace Wheeler. The lectures are being sponsored by Peter and Isabelle Malkin.

Along with the opening of the exhibition, Ms. Robertson said, the conservancy will present the first completed work of the renovation: the restoration of the huge bronze gate on Park Avenue, which, it was only recently discovered, is signed by the important American metal designer Mitchell, Vance & Co.

“We thought [the restoration of the gate] was a very symbolic way to say to the world that we are opening the building to the public, and to give some sense of what’s to come,” Ms. Robertson said.

The conservancy has started cleaning the granite trim that runs along the bottom of the building. Although it looked almost black, it turned out to be a creamy white, Ms. Robertson said. The conservancy has also planted the front garden that runs along Park Avenue. It was designed by Linden Miller, who has also restored the Conservatory Gardens in Central Park. Some of the planting was done by women from the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, a homeless shelter that occupies the Armory’s third and fifth floors.

Since the conservancy only recently took possession of the building, it is still doing surveys of the building’s condition and drawing up plans for the major parts of the restoration, which is expected to take five years. The most intense phase of construction will probably begin in the spring of 2010, Ms. Robertson said. The mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems have to be replaced, as well as the roofing and window materials, to bring them up to code for energy conservation. The total budget for construction is $200 million, of which $90 million has been raised so far.

The conservancy has already begun the job of installing the building’s first heating and air-conditioning system. The neighbors are particularly happy about that, Ms. Robertson said, because it means that during the art and antique fairs, the street will no longer be clogged with air-conditioning trucks.

The conservancy is approaching the next two to three years as a “research and development period,” Ms. Robertson said, in which they will figure out what kind of programs work best in the space. The goal is to program the Drill Hall with work that can’t be done anywhere else in New York.

“There’s no space in New York of this scale and flexibility available for the arts, in a location that’s so centrally located and well-serviced by transit,” Ms. Robertson said.

She is in talks with several cultural institutions around town about collaborations, although the only one she would name was New York City Opera, whose incoming artistic director, Gérard Mortier, has said he would like to bring a production to the Armory. Ms. Robertson said that Mr. Mortier is “sort of the father in the performing arts of using found industrial spaces,” having started the Ruhr Triennale, an international arts festival that takes place in industrial buildings in the Ruhr region of Germany.

Ms. Robertson said that several productions from the RuhrTriennale are being considered as prospects to bring to the Drill Hall. Other possible sources of productions include the Roundhouse in London, which is located in a former turntable railway shed for the London and Birmingham Railway; the Tramway in Glasgow, located in a former tram depot, and La Cartoucherie, Ariane Mnouchkine’s theater in a former munitions factory near Paris.

The16 period rooms in the building, meanwhile, are generating interest as potential venues for art exhibitions, chamber music concerts, lectures, or readings, Ms. Robertson said.

The major art and antique fairs will also continue for the foreseeable future. “We think they’re important to New York City,” Ms. Robertson said.