In Manhattan, a community health center’s deteriorating building has been resuscitated with a hardy dose of design.
Riverside Health Center‘s next-door neighbor is a 106-year-old Lutheran church, the only building within 32 acres to survive the wrecking ball of notorious New York planner Robert Moses as part of a huge slum-clearance project in the 1950s.
The health center, on the other hand, sprang up in the early 1960s in the demolished Upper West Side neighborhood once known as Manhattantown.
Riverside dutifully served the community—which remained mainly low-income—for over 40 years, but by the start of the new century was in need of a revitalization of its own.
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene selected 1100 Architect through the Department of Design and Construction’s Design Excellence program to modernize the deteriorating 36,000-square-foot facility.
While the New York– and Frankfurt-based firm had completed numerous renovation projects, this was its first health-care facility.