Commercial Real Estate; A Sullivan Is Restored With Honor

Except for some missing thumbs, the angels were fine. One of the lions, however, needed a new jaw.

These are not common problems for a landlord. But at 65 Bleecker Street, Marvin R. Shulsky has something uncommon on his hands: a minor masterpiece by the seminal architect Louis H. Sullivan of Chicago. And in New York City, when you've seen one Sullivan building, you've seen them all.

Completed in 1899, the 13-story structure, known as the Bayard-Condict Building, erupts between Broadway and Lafayette Street with sinuous terra-cotta vines, plump seed pods, spiky leaves, reedlike columns and glowering lion gargoyles. Crowning the ensemble are six 10-foot angels, wings outspread, forming an ethereal bridge from building to sky.

Going into its second century, the landmark structure required structural attention and a higher-toned retail tenant. So Mr. Shulsky undertook an $800,000 facade restoration and now plans to recreate Sullivan's exuberant original storefront.

''It's a terrific job,'' said Sherida E. Paulsen, chairwoman of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. ''This owner has taken this building back to its original glory.''

Matters were not so glorious a year ago. More than 1,000 of the 7,000 terra-cotta pieces in the facade were cracked or deteriorated. ''I figured I had a choice: cover the whole thing in $10's and $20's or redo the terra cotta,'' said Mr. Shulsky, whose family has owned the building since 1941.

The goal of the restoration project, designed by Wank Adams Slavin Associates and carried out by Richardson & Lucas, was to keep as much of Sullivan's original terra cotta as possible.

''Most people's concept of repairing a building is to throw out what's broken and put in something new,'' said Stephen E. v. Gottlieb, associate partner and director of preservation at Wank Adams Slavin. In the case of terra cotta, he said, replacements can run $500 apiece, twice the cost of removing, repairing and reinstalling an old piece.

At 65 Bleecker Street, the lower half of one lion-head panel, including a jaw, must be replaced. The angels were largely spared any damage, sheltered by a five-foot projecting cornice. Some lost their thumbs, however, and new ones had to be fashioned by Luis Martinez, a stone mason from the Galicia region of Spain, who worked on the facade with his son José.

Cracks were repaired with epoxy and fiberglass reinforcing. It is hard to spot them, even standing beneath the angels' wings on the scaffolding in front of the building. The scaffolding is to come down later this month.

With the facade work nearing an end, Mr. Shulsky is turning his attention to the Sullivan storefront. It was replaced with granite and aluminum in 1964 by his father, Elgin. ''What he did at the time was the right decision,'' Marvin Shulsky said. ''The tenancy of the building was low-end manufacturing and warehousing.''

Until the early 80's, the largest tenant was a ribbon maker and artificial flower importer. When that company moved to New Jersey, Mr. Shulsky hired the architect Edgar Tafel -- an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, who had apprenticed under Sullivan -- to refurbish the lobby.

In 1983, Mr. Shulsky began marketing 65 Bleecker Street to office tenants, asking $8 a square foot annually and glad to get it. Now, the asking rents are closer to $40 a square foot. Except for the retail space, there are no vacancies in the 110,000-square-foot building.

Tenants include USA Films; Estée Lauder and a Web site, gloss.com, which it owns with Chanel and Clarins; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Carl Fischer music publishing company; and the Sterling Lord Literistic agency.

The ground floor was occupied until last October by a photofinishing lab. ''With the type of tenancy we have in the upper floors, we should have a store that's in keeping,'' Mr. Shulsky said.

An attractive store might allow him to add $1 a square foot in rent upstairs, Mr. Shulsky said, or draw more tenants like Estée Lauder. He is not prepared to say how much he will ask for the space, which is dominated by 14-foot columns with ornamental capitals.

The old storefront had octagonal columns topped by capitals that might be described as cabbage heads on steroids, abundant with organic flourishes and incised geometry. The columns seemed to pierce the angled glass panels that formed the top of the show windows.

The capitals, removed in 1964, were salvaged by the art dealer Ivan Karp and given to the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where they now ornament the walls flanking the south entrance. Another capital saved by Mr. Karp, now at the Anonymous Arts Museum in Charlotteville, N.Y., will be used as the model for reproductions made by Boston Valley Terra Cotta of Hamburg, N.Y.

Details like the appropriate use of signs are still being discussed with the landmarks commission, said Joseph S. Tarella, a principal in Sawicki Tarella, the architectural firm designing the storefront and a tenant at 65 Bleecker.

But thinking of the photos published in The New York Times 38 years ago when the capitals were pried off, Mr. Tarella is already anticipating the return of those Sullivanesque flourishes. ''It is,'' he said, ''a kind of closure.''