History Now

Terminal Warehouse on West Street

By Brian J Pape, AIA

Image: NYPL Archives.

The Terminal Warehouse Company built the Central Stores building (right) around 1892 as a George Mallory-designed structure to store and transport goods for supplying the bustling city. A pair of railroad tracks is visible in this image looking east from West Street at 27th Street, with a locomotive exiting under the large central arch opening, that connects to Manhattan’s extensive set of waterfront rail lines, although this pair of tracks seems to only go south from the building. Note the cast-iron shutters to close and protect the arched windows throughout. The 670-foot-long ground floor tunnel-shaped hallway runs the length of the building, from West Street to Eleventh Avenue between 27th and 28th Streets. It allows unloading of the railroad cars at numerous stores along the spine. Typical for warehouses of this period, the structure is built with massive masonry load-bearing walls, steel columns and beams with mass timber joists and flooring. According to website YIMBY, an 80,000-square foot nightclub called ‘The Tunnel’ was here from the early 1990s to 2001.

Photo: Brian J. Pape, AIA.

Now, looking east from the same West Street vantage point, a $2 billion project designed by COOKFOX Architects and approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in Jan. 2020, has added a new reinforced concrete six-story office pavilion on top of the repurposed warehouse at 261 Eleventh Avenue in Chelsea. Instead of warehouse space, there will be new Class A office suites, ground-floor retail space, and multiple dining options in the 13-story tall building. The original exterior materials have been reinforced and restored, new historic-matched windows installed, and interior mass timber joists and flooring have been refinished.

According to YIMBY, around 100,000 square feet of new outdoor green space, including 29 private terraces and a central courtyard, landscaping in the ground-floor courtyard and upper terraces, along with wooden benches, garden beds, and other green shrubbery, has been installed. Sections of the rooftop terrace are laid with wooden boardwalks. The total amount of outdoor greenery will amount to 2.5 acres. Every floor of the new expansion will have outdoor spaces, some of which wrap around the entire floor plate. The new pavilion has an expansive glass window façade with exterior steel framing painted in bright colors, contrasting boldly with the brick or glass buildings around it.

Redeveloped by L&L Holding Company, Columbia Property Trust, and Cannon Hill Capital Partners, New Line Structures & Development is the general contractor.