During the eighteenth century, the area north of Wall Street grew rapidly and a new civic maturity began to emerge. By 1796, Manhattan was defined by a complex edge of its numerous wharfs and slips, as demanded by an ever increasing commerce, and the new administrative center uptown at City Hall Park. In between, the city has assumed a dense urban character as the configuration of the streets extended northwards along Broadway, the defining street of an emergent metropolis in the process of developing specific architectural typologies.

One of these types was a combined residential and commercial structure in which three or four residential floors were built over a commercial ground floor. The residential floors are articulated with regularly spaced windows, and the commercial base is formed of pilasters supporting a simple entablature that typically acts as a location for commercial signage. The entrance to the residential floors occupies one of the openings in the commercial arcade.

This building type made possible a commercial street that articulates the interaction between customer and tradesman at the ground floor level, creating the sense of a permeable base between building and street, above which the walls of the residential structures, lifted above the street, define the urban volume. The urban result can be seen in a view such as that shown in a section of Edward Burckhardt’s wonderfully detailed pen and ink panorama of 1845, one part of which shows the south side of Fulton Street between Nassau and Broadway. The grand commercial artery gives nobility and urban presence to the enterprise of trade.

Duane Street, which had lain at the extreme North of Manhattan in the late eighteenth century, was developed in the mid-nineteenth century using exactly the combined residential and commercial architectural type shown in the Burckhardt view, including 147 Duane Street, built in 1855.

By the time the area was designated as the Tribeca South Historic District in 1978 however, the façade had suffered greatly, being covered over in stucco, and having lost all sense of its former architectural expression.

The program for a renovation of the building called for the restoration of the building façade and the creation of a new retail space on the ground floor. This retail space, A Taste of Art, is a combined art gallery and café.

The ground floor façade was stripped down to the original surviving historical material, which consisted of five evenly spaced cast iron pilasters with inset panels. The pilasters were discovered to have been painted with an original green-black paint with gold leaf accents around the inset panels. The two outermost pilasters are slightly wider than the others, creating a sense of closure at the ends of the composition, and demonstrating that even in the simplest of mid-nineteenth century commercial structures, a subtle classical composition could still prevail within the most conventional type.

While the existing façade, with its scrolled brackets and metal cornice, was renovated to return it to its original appearance, the ground floor was given a contrasting design. The pilasters were retained but the rest of the ground floor façade was articulated in a distinctly modern language of metal and glass. An entablature-like band was constructed above the pilasters using back painted glass, and a system of solid glass rods set into painted steel fins. These rods create some of the characteristic light and shade of a classical cornice but in a way that is more reflective and less solid.

Below the entablature, the maximum glass area is used between the pilasters. Entry to the store is through a glass door and short ramp leading to the main L-shaped display space. The door hardware and ramp railing design are of sinuous shapes that lead the eye into the space. White walls and ceilings with halogen track lighting allow the art to be clearly seen. Monitors for video art and small light boxes for the viewing of transparencies are set flush with the surface of the walls.

A diagonal 4" wide maple plank floor carries the eye to the back of the gallery where the minimalism of the gallery is contrasted with the elaborate and richly detailed food display and bar area. Refrigerated stainless steel cabinets contain caviar, truffles, chocolates and other delicacies. A cantilevered etched mirror countertop acts as the bar area where champagne or cappuccino may be consumed.

Behind the bar is an elaborate display wall above a stainless steel countertop, in which maple cabinets alternate with clear and etched mirror, interspersed with panels of bubbled mirror that simulate the effervesence in a champagne flute.

These materials and the social arrangement of the space with its tables, chairs, and bar seating, all open to the street, are designed to create a small intimate urban room in which it is possible to feel part of a community.

Symbolic of this aim is a display box embedded in one of the walls.  The box is set at a specific angle so that, with the reflection of its mirrored back, it contains, besides the object within, reflections of the entry door, the street activity and the Duane Street façades all overlaid on a reflection of the back wall and bar surface. The box refers to, and in a sense contains, the whole commerce of the area in the last two hundred years.