RGR designed the offices and gallery spaces for Bernard & S. Dean Levy, Inc. “just steps from the Metropolitan Museum of Art” on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The project involved the complete interior demolition and reconstruction of a 19th-Century brownstone within the Madison Avenue Preservation District. Although the original building had been altered with contemporary rooms and finishes, the building’s basic structure and shell offered the opportunity to create a series of gracious interior spaces for the display of the Levy collection of fine antique furniture and art. For each of the five gallery floors, architectural details were designed to complement the great periods of American furniture, paintings, and decorative wares that comprise the collection. In addition to the historic interior finishes and detailing, this restoration project included a new steel structural system to enhance the building’s wood frame construction, a new elevator shaft, new lighting, new mechanical systems, and reconstruction of the front facade to incorporate new display windows. The main front entry was framed with a Federal Doorway that once graced the “Old Griffith House”.
