555 WEST END AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY

AIA MERIT AWARD HISTORIC PRESERVATION

555 West End Avenue, located in New York City’s West End Historic District involved the comprehensive exterior restoration and adaptive-reuse of a former Catholic Boys’ High School for new residential development. 555 West End Avenue is a 7-story Collegiate Gothic style structure constructed in 1907-08. The NYC Landmarks Commission notes that the building’s scale, details and materials are among the features that provide its specialarchitectural and historical character. The project’s comprehensive restoration work conserved, enhanced and re-created the special building and site features. 

The building has a prominent limestone base above which rise 5 floors faced with brick, including brick turrets, and limestone window surrounds and details. The structure is surmounted by a 7th story faced almost wholly with carefully detailed limestone arched panels. Restoration work included the complete cleaning of all stone and brick based on a series of rigorous mockups. Work also included the re-pointing of the entire structure; replacement mortar was based on scientific testing of original mortar and development of a new, compatible, and color-matched, mortar recipe. Masonry restoration work also included replacing damaged brick with matching brick and patching damaged stone and brick with restoration mortar matching the existing in color and texture. The highly decorative West End Avenue parapet with its’ crenelations, panels and intricately detailed wreath had been removed. Using historic drawings and photographs, a new replacement cast stone parapet was re-created, which matched the original in all details and also satisfied current building codes for structural performance.  The limestone parapet panels were carefully modified to accommodate a new 7th floor and new single-lite casement windows retaining the original character of the panels.   

Restoration work included the measurement of all original wood windows, over 20 types, and the design of new energy efficient wood windows which are exact replicas of the original windows. Work also included the restoration of the central 6th floor copper bay including cleaning and patching. Restoration work included extensive restoration of the areaway around the limestone-faced basement including significant rebuilding and complete repointing of the perimeter areaway walls. A decorative cast iron fence is anchored into the areaway walls adjacent to the sidewalks. The fences were restored and painted. Significantly damaged sections, including gates, were removed for shop repair and re-creation of missing features. 555 West End Avenue now rises above the street fully restored as it appeared in the early 20th century.