Arts Desk
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
LANDMARK COMMISSION APPROVES WHITNEY EXPANSION The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has approved, by unanimous vote, a design for the expansion of the Whitney Museum of American Art. The plan, a revised version of that originally proposed, includes the demolition of one brownstone next to the museum and the construction of a nine-story tower just south of the current structure.
The Whitney still has additional city review to undergo, but the commission’s approval was a major step forward. “I think this is one of the great days for the Whitney Museum,” the director of the museum, Adam Weinberg, said.
The plan, by Italian designer Renzo Piano, had originally called for two of the brownstones next to the museum to be torn down for a 32-foot-wide entrance that would feed onto a plaza. But one of the brownstones is considered a contributing part of the Upper East Side historic district.
The remaining brownstone, the other buildings on Madison Avenue and two brownstones on adjacent 74th Street would be renovated, but their back portions would essentially be sheared off. The new tower would go up in the space created by cutting off the back halves of the buildings.
Other attempts at expansion have not gone well for the museum. In 2003 a $200 million plan was scrapped as too expensive. Another plan faced staunch opposition from the museum’s commercial and residential neighbors in the 1980s.
