Vanderbilt & Myrtle Building Gets New Architect, Unexpected Look

Super scoopers New York YIMBY have uncovered a proposed design for a new building coming to 134 Vanderbilt Avenue (at Myrtle Avenue), current site of a defunct Gulf gas station.

DNAInfo reported earlier this year that the building would be a Karl Fischer design, but YIMBY says more recent paperwork lists ODA‘s Eran Chen as the new architect on the project. Says YIMBY of the building’s nontraditional look:

A rendering obtained by YIMBY depicts a seven-story building (or is that eight?) featuring Chen’s characteristic sleek modernism and irregularly protruding cubes, with a black façade finish between floors. The sides of the boxes jutting out of the building, and some of those indented spaces, are faced with a rust-colored brown – a material that looks to be Corten steel, popularized by SHoP at Barclays Center and now showing up seemingly everywhere.

134 is slated to contain 45 units over 65,000 sq ft, including 41,000 sq ft of residential space and 3,000 sq ft of community space (books, barber, bagel, something?). Permits say it will be 80 feet tall, although there is some discrepancy between the above rendering and permits filed, the latter of which specifies only six stories to be built.

It joins a number of other development projects on and around the avenue, including two luxury buildings coming to the Stueben Street area valued at $50 million, a building at 525 Myrtle, Pratt-owned buildings coming to Emerson Place, and Silverstone Property Group’s whole block of developments between Grand Avenue and Hall Street. As for Karl Fischer, he’s still got buildings going up at the former Fairhaven Funeral Parlor on Fulton Street as well as on Myrtle all the way up by Throop Avenue.

“If realized,” says YIMBY, “ODA’s striking design for 134 Vanderbilt would finally return some dignity to Myrtle Avenue.”

What do you think of the thoroughly modern design for 134? Will it be Myrtle’s saving grace as YIMBY suggests, or is it far too out of place on a street that’s already perfectly dignified, thankyouverymuch?

Rendering by ODA Architecture via New York YIMBY