New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on the 9th that construction has begun on a $184 million rebuild of the former 70 Mulberry Street building in Manhattan's Chinatown. Five organizations, including a senior center and the Museum of Chinese in America, will move back into the eight-story building, which was damaged in a January 2020 fire.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani broke ground on Monday, the 9th, on a $184 million project to rebuild the former 70 Mulberry Street building in Manhattan's Chinatown. The building, which was heavily damaged in a fire on Jan. 23, 2020, will be rebuilt as an eight-story cultural and community facility, and five organizations that were scattered by the fire will move in permanently.
Designed by C.B.J. Snyder in 1892, the building originally served as Public School P.S. 23. After the school closed in the mid-1970s, it became a hub for local organizations. The tenants are the CPC Chinatown Senior Citizen Center, the United East Athletic Association, the Chen Dance Center, the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) and the Chinatown Manpower Project. Since the fire, some of the organizations have been operating at reduced capacity in temporary locations.
Facility Size and Design
The new building will have about 30% more public space than before. It will have six community rooms and a new kitchen for the senior center, and a sixth-floor multipurpose room overlooking Columbus Park will connect to an outdoor terrace on the Mulberry and Bayard Street side. Total capacity will be up to 475 people. Two stories of the 1892 building's exterior walls and its historic staircase will be preserved.
With three elevators and accessibility features, the building will meet Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards, and it will be fully electric. A rooftop solar canopy and facade solar installations are expected to generate up to 410 MWh a year, covering up to 30% of its power needs, and the project is aiming for LEED Platinum green building certification. Grimshaw of the U.K. is the designer, and Hunter Roberts is handling construction management.
The city's Department of Cultural Affairs' Percent for Art program will also install a public artwork by artist Jennifer Wen Ma, "Wings of Everchange" (易之翼). The three-part work uses items recovered from the fire site. The city did not confirm a completion date for the project in its press release that day.