pwilliam.com - Park Avenue Armory

Herzog & de Meuron

Park Avenue Armory
Manhattan, New York
Ongoing

Adaptation of historic military building into unique performance, art, and cultural center

The Park Avenue Armory is unusual even for New York City, with a 55,000 square foot former military drill hall accessed from Lexington Avenue, and a "head house" on Park Avenue that contains unique and remarkable rooms designed by Louis Tiffany, Stanford White, and other luminaries of the Gilded Age. Built in 1880, with funding from the US National Guard's wealthy Seventh Regiment, it later fell into disrepair, as times and the culture changed.

This renovation is to reveal, stabilize, and preserve what remains of the original designs, layer in the physical infrastructure of a contemporary art, performance, and cultural center, and use new work to reconcile the two, and help each historic space feel complete. Old and new elements will feel thoroughly blended and harmonious from a distance, but, at close range, the differences between them, and the subtle choices involved, are fully evident.

Park Avenue Armory
Manhattan, New York

[PETEr William Dougherty contributed to THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY while working in the office of Herzog & de Meuron, BASEL, WHICH is sole author of the project.]

Client: Park Avenue Armory / Design Consultant: Herzog & de Meuron, Basel, Switzerland / Executive Architect: Platt Byard Dovell White Architects, New York. For additional credits, images, and details, please see HERZOG & DE MEURON PROJECT #293