☞ ARCHITECTURE: 313-315 West 125th Street

There's not a lot of cast iron buildings uptown and we were always wondering about number 313-315 West 125th Street (just east of St. Nicholas) since its rusted facade had been deteriorating not so elegantly in the past few years. In the top photo taken yesterday, one can see that blue scaffolding was being installed in the morning and that some sort of activity is starting on the site. Downtown Soho has a wide variety of different cast iron buildings and it would be a shame if this one was scheduled for demolition. So we checked the DOB files and the five-story building is set for a full building renovation with the first two floors being combined into one. So the question now is what kind of space would this be with a huge atrium at the lower level? Converting a building to have less levels is quite unheard of these days. Anyone know what's going on here? Photo by Ulysses