Original Facade of Former Salvation Army Citadel To Be Retained
By Linda Collins
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
FORT GREENE — The design of a new building at 321 Ashland Place in the BAM Cultural District was unanimously approved at Tuesday’s meeting of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC).
“Basically, the commissioners stated that the design, scale and materials of [architect] Hugh Hardy’s design for the addition are appropriate,” said Lisi de Bourbon, LPC press secretary. “Community Board 2 and several preservation advocacy groups testified in support of the project.”
The proposed building, to be called the Richard B. Fisher Building, is the former home of the Salvation Army’s Brooklyn Citadel, currently in use by Brooklyn Music & Arts.
The front portion of the old building will be retained and its facade restored; the new six-story structure will replace most of the rest of the old building, according to Hardy, a principal with H3 Hardy Collaboration Architects.
“I think it’s important because the design is based on a six-story building and how it relates to a two-story building,” Hardy told the Eagle Thursday. “This not a roof-top addition.”
He also noted the relationship of this building with the Brooklyn Academy of Music on one side and the Williamsburgh Savings Bank on the other — “both with big walls of masonry and round arches.”
“The new composition of this building between them relates well to those buildings,” he said.
As announced by BAM in January, the new structure will be for the performing arts and will feature a flexible-space theater with movable seats, a rehearsal hall, dressing rooms, an education department and classrooms, and a green roof.
Also as previously reported, construction funding comes from Jeanne Donovan Fisher, widow of the late Richard Fisher (formerly chairman of the BAM Endowment Trust) for whom the building was named, and from the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), the City Council’s Brooklyn delegation, the State Assembly and Senate Brooklyn delegations and Borough President Marty Markowitz.
“We’re creating a new center for creativity with school-based programs and community-based programs,” Jeanne Donovan Fisher said in January.
According to BAM spokesperson Sandy Sawortka, demolition is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2010, the new construction will begin in summer 2010 and completion is estimated for spring 2012.
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