Three Arts

Organization Name: Curtis + Ginsberg Architects

Project Title: Three Arts

Project Location: Upper West Side, Manhattan

Project Description:
Three Arts is a substantial rehabilitation and reconfiguration of a 60,000 SF eight-story and penthouse building in the Riverside-West End Historic District. Designed by architect George de Gersdorff in 1927, the historic Three Arts Club was the first residential club in the United States for young women studying and working in the “Three Arts” of music, drama, and the fine arts. The gut renovation design will create an all-electric building with modern apartments providing permanent supportive senior housing, maintaining its NYC Landmark protected Colonial Revival façade and National Register of Historic Places listed public rooms. The NYC Landmark Preservation Commission approved a new accessible entry ramp at the entrance, which, combined with a new second elevator, will provide access to 61 fully accessible single-occupancy senior supportive housing units. Designed to meet PHI EnerPHIt Passive House and Enterprise Green Communities standards, the rehabilitation integrates a highly insulated envelope, VRF and PTHP units for heating and cooling, high-efficiency ERVs providing fresh air to all units, and air-source heat pumps for hot water, helping maintain resident health and reducing energy costs.

Community Impact:
The Three Arts Club building was originally created as a safe, supportive, and affordable residence for aspiring women artists. Honoring its historic mission to create affordable housing for New Yorkers, the rehabilitated building will provide a safe, healthy, and comfortable living environment for formerly homeless, extremely and very low-income seniors aged 62 and older. Amenities will include a newly accessible restored roof deck and penthouse with resident lounge, and social services offices for senior residents operated by WSFSSH. The historic public rooms on the lower floors will be reserved for community-based nonprofit use, maintaining the relationship the building currently has with the larger community. These spaces will be equipped with emergency power for critical systems, including a heat emergency cooling center. Supported by two NYSERDA Buildings of Excellence grants, the highly sustainable Passive House building will minimize energy consumption to help maintain affordability in a neighborhood with a dearth of affordable senior housing.

Organization Description:
West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing (WSFSSH) is a 50-year-old community-based nonprofit organization responding to the urgent need for safe, affordable senior housing in New York City. Curtis + Ginsberg Architects is an award-winning architecture and planning firm with a mission to improve the built environment in a sustainable and socially conscious manner, believing everyone deserves quality design, and that design can effect positive change for individuals and communities.

Team Members:

Developer–WSFSSH
Architect–Curtis + Ginsberg
Historic Preservation–Mary Kay Judy
Structural–Old Structures Engineering
MEPF–Dagher
Sustainability–Steven Winter
Accessibility–United Spinal