In 1989, the City of New York repossessed Flushing’s 1862 Romanesque revival Town Hall from a private tenant who was destroying it by neglect. PBDW was invited by the Flushing Council for Culture and the Arts to help plan a process that would return the Flushing Town Hall to community use as a center for cultural and social life in the neighborhood.

We first prepared a master plan to establish a framework for the control of the renovation. After preliminary investigations of the building, drawing on an understanding of the original configuration and purposes of the spaces in the Hall, we restored the building’s exterior and recaptured the old Hall upstairs for music and other performances. The $5 million renewed Hall was put back to its original mid-19th century flat-floored configuration with a new perimeter of side box seating and a balcony, in order to support a variety of performance configurations.

Preservation League of New York State Annual Preservation Award for Historic Preservation, 2000

New York City Art Commission Excellence in Design, 1992