A 1930s Manhattan building designed by the same architects behind the Empire State Building is getting a renovation that incorporates its pasts as landing spot and then prison.
Opposite the basketball courts and driving ranges of Chelsea Piers, in a Manhattan neighborhood increasingly associated with affluence, stands a remnant of the working waterfront of a century ago.
Merchant sailors once found their way to the brick building, which had a swimming pool tiled with fish mosaics and a chapel with ship-themed stained-glass windows. More recently though, many of the building’s niceties disappeared, the property turning into a women’s prison that became plagued with sexual abuse allegations.
Now, 14 years after it closed, the building, at West 20th Street and 11th Avenue, is being readied for its next act, as affordable housing.
The eight-story masonry structure stands out amid a stretch of glassy starchitect-designed creations. And while it is not unusual in a city that is constantly changing for buildings to cycle through different uses, this one has had perhaps more twists and turns than most.
“It’s a huge piece of neighborhood history,” said Joe Restuccia, co-chair of the Housing, Health & Human Services Committee of Manhattan Community Board 4, which has long advocated preservation and reuse of the building.
Opened in 1931 as the Seamen’s House Y.M.C.A. the building offered accommodations not only to sailors but also to stewardesses who worked on ocean-liners — the first building of its kind to welcome women, according to a historic structure report in 1989. An adjacent brick building served as a laundry for this and other Ys in Manhattan and the Bronx.
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, the architects of the Empire State Building, designed the Seamen’s House and brought the same streamlined Art Deco styling to the smaller structure — and threw in nautical motifs like terra-cotta anchors and lighthouses in keeping with the seafaring theme.
After the state acquired the properties in 1967, it first used them for a residential drug treatment center. In 1974, the joined buildings were reclassified as a correctional facility.
The fact that the building was not a purpose-built prison may have contributed to some of the problems documented in a series of reports beginning in 1985, said Konstantin Yelisavetskiy, a partner at the law firm Slater Slater Schulman, which has brought over 300 cases on behalf of former inmates. (None of the cases have been settled.)
“There was abuse in a slop-sink closet, bathrooms, mess-hall freezers — plenty of opportunity for guards to engage in this behavior,” he added.
It was Hurricane Sandy in 2012 that shut down what was then the Bayview Correctional Facility. Inmates were evacuated in advance of the storm, which brought 14 feet of flooding, knocking out boilers and corroding electrical equipment.
Repairs were made, but the building remained empty, as if frozen in time.
Empire State Development made earlier attempts to repurpose it. A developer and a philanthropic group affiliated with a son of Warren Buffett had once planned an office conversion for nonprofit groups working on women’s issues.
But by 2019, the initiative had foundered, and in the intervening years the housing shortage across New York worsened. When the state issued a new request for proposals in 2023, it called for affordable and supportive housing instead of commercial use.
Camber collaborated on the winning proposal with the Osborne Association, a nonprofit that provides services to the incarcerated, including to Bayview inmates while the prison was open. A joint venture of the two entities purchased the building for the token fee of $1 earlier this year.
Under their plan, 79 of the mostly studio and one-bedroom apartments will be set aside for individuals aged 50 and older who are exiting prisons. The redeveloped building will have offices for case managers who will work with those residents and meeting rooms for group counseling.
The other apartments will be for those earning 60 to 80 percent of the area median income and obtained through a housing lottery.
A planted area on the roof of the original structure will replace a fenced-in space where inmates once got fresh air.
The building is currently surrounded by sidewalk sheds, and interior demolition recently began. Construction is expected to take three years, said Rick Gropper, a Camber founding principal, in part because environmental remediation must be done.
The architects said they are looking past the prison years to the Y.M.C.A. period, poring over period photographs and original building plans.
Lost terra-cotta details at the roofline will be recreated, and old pool tiles will be redeployed in a newly configured lobby.
A chapel mural depicting a ship sailing on the open sea will likely remain in place, protected by foam and plywood. Stained-glass window panels and Deco ceiling fixtures may be removed for safekeeping during construction and later reinstalled.
What’s left of an abstract mural that the artist Knox Martin painted on the south side of the building in 1970 — most of which was covered up by the luxury residential tower built next door — will also be preserved.
But the building will have plenty of new features, too: It will be all-electric and heat pumps will be tucked under new windows.
“We’re designing these apartments the way we’d design any apartments in any project,” said Bethany Borel, an associate partner at CookFox, “and returning the overall sense of the building to be a place of refuge instead of confinement.”
