Trend Analysis of Contextual Design in New York City’s Historic District : Focusing on Remodeling, Extension, and New Buildings in Manhattan

To protect heritage through the preservation of historic buildings, sites, and districts, New York State enacted its first urban historic preservation law in the city of Schenectady³⁾ in 1962. Since then, New York State has enacted local historic preservation laws or ordinances in more than 175 municipalities [8]. Accordingly, Congress granted diverse powers to regulate historic resources, such as state historic preservation laws, historic landmark laws, and certified local government programs to regulate local governments and preserve historical and aesthetic resources. To this end, after listing buildings, structures, districts, objects, and places of historical, architectural, archaeological, and cultural significance to New York on lists of historical relics registered under the Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the New York State Legislature created the Register of Historic Places and passed the State Historic Conservation Act (L.1980, C.354) in 1980. Since the registered buildings are subject to strict regulations, their owners may express dissatisfaction when repairing or remodeling their properties. To address this issue, the legislation provides benefits, and proposals are examined by a committee to consider their legality through a statement and to enforce reasonable regulations.

For this purpose, the following powers are granted to municipalities:

First, municipalities are granted the authority to create their own historic preservation laws and protect historic resources through zoning laws for cities, towns, and villages.

Second, most municipalities that have enacted historic preservation laws or ordinances through zoning or separate preservation laws may establish a separate body (Design Review Board — Architectural Review Committee, Design Review Committee, or Historic Preservation Committee) to review proposed projects located in historic districts or affecting historic assets.

Third, the Act generally allows for the creation of local ordinance standards to protect historic resources that require new construction or modification to be compatible with existing structures that hold historic or architectural value.

Fourth, as part of site planning reviews, cities, towns, and villages may enact site planning review laws and ordinances as components of local laws or as separate enactments.

Fifth, the Landmarks Preservation Act provides additional authority for governments to protect historic resources through local laws or ordinances and supplements the zoning authority of local governments.

There are approximately 35,000 landmark buildings in New York City, most of which are located in 139 historic districts and extensions of historic districts in the five boroughs. Various approvals must be obtained from the commission to gain permission for alterations or remodeling of historic structures in New York City. The purpose of the commission is to preserve historically significant and important buildings and sites for the purpose of protecting the locational and property value of landmarks, fostering civic pride and educational quality, vitalizing the local economy, and maintaining and preserving them as tourist attractions.

As the largest urban preservation organization in the United States, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) has the authority to designate significant buildings within historic districts as landmarks and to designate historic districts, and it manages various organizations related to such work. The agency comprises 11 commissioners and, by law, must include at least three architects, a historian, an urban planner or landscape architect, a real estate broker, and at least one resident from each borough.

The LCP Permit Guidebook covers the requirements for various permits and approvals in great detail, and compliance with these legal elements is necessary to successfully complete the permit process. These requirements are covered in 14 chapters, which provide extremely detailed guidelines for topics ranging from windows and signage to HVAC,⁴⁾ allowing us to discern the efforts made to preserve historic landmarks[9].

As outlined in these items, the most important consideration when creating historic districts is to protect exceptional areas as a whole; this is important because only the creation and regulation of historic districts can prevent the piecemeal destruction of such remarkable areas.

Separate from the guidelines of various committees, Chapter 12 of the Building Code of New York State deals with various aspects of historic buildings in detail. An examination of its contents reveals that it covers considerations in a concrete and detailed manner. The important points can be summarized as follows[10]:

Section 1: This section explains general concepts and the scope of coverage.

Section 2: This section covers in detail everything from permissible materials when replacing or repairing the original to requirements that must be observed when replacing.

Section 3: This section comprehensively covers guidelines for fire safety and evacuation, from emergency exits to the fire resistance ratings of various fire-resistant materials as well as stairs and fire extinguishing devices. The types include lintels, interior finishes, staircase finishes, fire-resistant materials, handrails, guard rails, emergency exits, fire extinguishers, etc. It was found that special attention is paid to fire safety and disaster prevention.

Section 4: This section covers requirements that must be observed for changes in use, including details about everything from the allowable building area and fire-retardant roofing materials to fire prevention elements for materials and means of evacuation and escape. There is also content related to natural lighting, showing that careful consideration is being taken to prevent damage to the historical characteristics and materials of the building.

Section 5: This section deals with the structural details of existing buildings that must be adhered to at a level that ensures they remain undamaged, aiming to ensure the safety of older buildings to the fullest extent possible.

Section 6: This section addresses in detail regulatory requirements regarding exterior walls and openings for the case of buildings restructured through remodeling, etc.

When classified based on type, of the 40 surveyed buildings, new constructions were the most common with 25 such buildings, accounting for 62.5% of the total, followed by nine remodeled buildings and six expanded buildings. The breakdown is shown in Table 5.

Table 5.

Classification by contextual type

The main reason for the high number of new constructions in historic areas is rooted in the fact that as the city develops, there are limits to how existing land plots can accommodate the growing city, prompting developers to create plans to construct commercial buildings of a certain scale by merging adjacent plots, driven by considerations of business feasibility. Manhattan’s areas of historical significance are located in secluded areas and are old and run down; thus, they may be considered to have low preservation value, prompting the demolition of low-rise structures in favor of economically viable options such as apartment buildings or commercial developments. Even buildings considered for preservation are often remodeled to align with modern sensibilities through renovation or expansion, thereby making changes in accordance with the trends of the times.

One notable point is that the transformation of Manhattan’s historic districts is likely to continue increasing due to regeneration, which raises the concern that traces of historic buildings will gradually decline and diminish due to the very nature of downtown areas. Though effort will be made to preserve the historical context through the framework of legal regulations and guidelines, there are limitations to imposing restrictions on or preventing change to private property; therefore, it is anticipated that new buildings even larger than the existing ones will continue to proliferate.

Contextual design techniques have been analyzed and classified as summarized in Table 6. The main feature revealed by the analysis is that there were 20 sites that used techniques with contrast effects, accounting for 50% of the total. This is a technique that uses contrasting effects to make the building distinct from the traditional buildings neighboring it. Additionally, 13 sites, constituting 32.5%, employed abstraction techniques, appearing to be the result of an effort to preserve context by incorporating similar design elements to the surrounding buildings, including colors, materials, shapes, and proportions. The five sites classified under the imitation technique do not precisely replicate existing structures but mimic certain aspects of the original forms, representing a somewhat modified imitation approach.

Table 6.

Classification by contextual design technique

Two sites used the focus technique, though not as prominently as a powerful landmark such as the Eiffel Tower; rather, these sites were classified under this technique due to the significant differences and variations it introduced in relation to the height and design elements of neighboring buildings. While these could also be seen as contrast techniques, these buildings were classified under the focus technique due to their potential to act as new landmark elements in the areas where they are located.

The analysis results suggested that the contrast and abstraction techniques are predominant. These methods are the easiest ways to design, with one technique involving applying contrasting effects to clearly distinguish between new and old and the other considering the key elements of surrounding buildings to create a visually similar flow by reflecting their feel and rhythm. It was found that these two methods are the most popular.

Upon analyzing the elevation materials of the 40 surveyed buildings as presented in Table 7., as can be seen in Table 8., it was observed that buildings designed with glass curtain walls accounted for the highest number, with 13 buildings, and eight buildings used a combination of glass, brick, and stone. Thus, approximately 50% of the surveyed buildings used glass as their primary material. This can be considered a recent phenomenon in architecture that has inevitably surfaced even in historic districts, serving as evidence for assessing modern material usage trends.

Table 8.

Statistics of main materials of samples

The prevalent use of glass curtain walls can be attributed to the fact that it is a case of employing contrasting design techniques. When considering the context with the surroundings, such an approach creates an extremely separate relationship and distinct interpretation, creating a contrasting effect to more actively address the issue. This approach completely distinguishes between the new and the old, the traditional and the modern, emphasizing the originality of each building’s elevation over specific contextual associations, thereby highlighting each individual building itself while applying and reflecting contrast effects.

Additionally, four buildings were found to have applied the method of maintaining the natural flow of the street by incorporating similar materials and colors to neighboring buildings by using brick or stone to achieve harmony with the surrounding environment. While this method should ideally be the fundamental approach that is applied the most when considering context, the results of this study unexpectedly revealed that completely different techniques were applied more frequently.

Attempts at extreme contrast using curtain walls sometimes encountered significant challenges during the construction process due to strong opposition from residents of heritage preservation areas and urban planning committee members, and some of these buildings have been considered by architectural critics as failures in terms of contextual design.

In particular, the sudden height discrepancies caused by high-rise buildings being built among low-rise housing complexes impeded the flow with the surroundings, and the glass structures often resulted in a soulless appearance, leading such buildings to sometimes be called monster buildings that were harshly criticized post-completion. This is a design technique that employs extreme contrasts and is regularly used by many modern architects when discussing context in historic heritage areas. While there is clearly a sharp division of opinions on this technique, it is undoubtedly an important issue requiring considerable deliberation and guidelines for suggesting future directions for architectural endeavors within heritage preservation zones.

The analysis of whether the 40 surveyed buildings are, in objective terms, in harmony with neighboring structures or exhibit contrast effects is summarized in Table 9.

Table 9.

Analysis of the degree of harmony and contrast effects

While the analysis of whether there are contrast effects may entail some subjectivity, efforts were made to evaluate this based on objective criteria from a macroscopic perspective, and the criteria were analyzed and classified with an emphasis on the relationship with surrounding buildings, even if there was contrast from a contextual perspective.

In terms of harmony, around 50% demonstrated moderate harmony, 25% demonstrated good harmony, and the remaining 25% was judged to be non-harmonious. Ultimately, approximately 75% of the surveyed buildings were considered to be designed harmoniously from a contextual perspective. Although there may be differing opinions from a general perspective, it can be indirectly inferred that architects made an effort to consider the surrounding environment.

Viewed from a contextual standpoint, this is fortunate, as it indicates that architects have striven to implement ethical and logical designs out of a sense of responsibility within the urban and architectural spheres.

While designs that have applied contrastive effects would have been completed after deliberation and approval by the historic preservation committee within historic districts, considerable differences may have existed when considering contextual harmony within existing areas. This is a reflection of scenarios where, when attempting new contextual designs, considering traditional materials or maintaining consistency in elevation proves challenging, and due to various economic factors affecting business feasibility, it is common to resort to contrasting elements that are most readily accessible as the primary solution and widely apply these.

Regardless of the verdict on whether the products of this contrasting design technique are right or wrong, perhaps it is worth considering whether such a technique is the new trend of modern urban change in the rapidly evolving historic districts of New York City unless the building in question is a special landmark building.