New York's Cooperative and Condominium Community

Habitat Magazine Insider Guide

HABITAT

CHATHAM GREEN

In general, boards do not involve shareholders in the particulars of an elevator redesign. Most residents simply want to know when the machine will be out of service and for how long — they don't particularly care whether or not it will have a Fritztile floor. Sometimes a condo or co-op board will establish a committee to consider design elements and then bring recommendations to the full board. You don't always need to do that — but you do always need to consider not only the mechanical parts of elevator replacement or refurbishing, but the design as well.

When Chatham Green was built in 1961, it was a striking departure. “The most aesthetically ambitious unified assemblage of high-modern buildings in the city,” wrote the architecture critic Francis Morrone some years later. The complex, built in 1961, now seems to have as many admirers as detractors of its design.

“I really like the shape of this building, and I've always wondered what it's like to live there,” writes one observer on the website Wired New York. “It looks very high-density.” But another blogger counters: “Reminds me of a[n Anthony] Burgess-inspired dystopian future vision, circa 1960. Horror show.”

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