Long Duration Restoration

The long-awaited restoration of 260 Warren Street, at one of the principal gateways to the city, seems finally to be approaching its finale. The building, the owner of which is now listed in the tax rolls as Galvan Civic Housing LLC, has been transferred from Eric Galloway LLC to another for fifteen years or more, and during that time, proposals for its restoration have come before the Historic Preservation Commission three times, and three times, the HPC has granted a certificate of appropriateness only to have it expire before any of the proposed work was undertaken. The last certificate of appropriateness was granted in January 2018, and it appears the third time was the charm, for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, right around the time of the HPC's most recent review of the project, the picture of the building shown below, from the Evelyn & Robert Monthie Slide Collection, was discovered. It provided the detailed guidance needed for the HPC to insist that the original doors, which disappeared without a trace sometime in 2006, be re-created exactly as they were.

The third time was also the charm in that the proposed restoration was actually undertaken.

I have told the story at least once on Gossips of how, while driving by the building one morning, I witnessed the original doors, which had been removed and replaced with plywood sometime before, being loaded onto a pickup truck and how I followed the truck to a garage on Seventh Street. To bring the story full circle, I happened to be driving by the same corner this afternoon and witnessed the new reproduction doors being unloaded from a truck. Back in 2006, I didn't have a camera with me to snap pictures; today, I did.

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