St. Vincent's Chooses Pei As Architect for New Hospital
From the Villager
St. Vincent’s picks architect for hospital building
By Albert Amateau
St. Vincent’s Hospital last week introduced the international architectural firm of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners as the designer of its proposed new hospital in Greenwich Village.
The Aug. 1 announcement came at a meeting of the Community Working Group that St. Vincent’s organized earlier this year to ensure that neighborhood concerns are addressed in the development of the state-of-the-art hospital on its O’Toole Building site on Seventh Ave. between W. 12th and 13th Sts.
In addition to architects from Pei Cobb Freed and from Ballinger, the Philadelphia-based firm designing the interior of the new hospital, Anthony J. Amoroso, St. Vincent’s new president and chief executive officer, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer were at the Aug. 1 working group meeting.
“Greenwich Village is one of the most historically rich neighborhoods in the world and our process will begin and end with that vital consideration in mind,” said Ian Bader, a partner at Pei Cobb Freed.
Amoroso also pledged that the hospital would listen to community concerns. But neighborhood members of the working group repeated their opposition to a project that includes a new hospital building estimated at 18 to 20 stories tall on the west side of Seventh Ave. and the redevelopment of the current main hospital campus on the east side of Seventh Ave. into high-end residential apartments by the Rudin Organization, St. Vincent’s development partners.
Working group members said they were anxious about the impact of the tall new building at the northern entrance to the Village on the low-rise character of the neighborhood, as well as the impact on P.S. 41 on W. 11th St. and other Village institutions of an as-yet-undetermined number of luxury residential units.