The New York Historical Looks Down East for Its Facelift

"For a new edifice that will adjoin the old one on West Seventy-sixth Street, the Historical (if we must) and Robert A. M. Stern Architects (or RAMSA, if you insist) wanted to use the same kind of granite, to stay true to the building's origins and to drive home the idea that, as Roy Moskowitz, the Historical's project manager, put it, "We've always intended to do this, and it's only fair that we be allowed to do this.""

"The question arose: What granite is it, and where might one find it? The archives cited a stone called Sherwood pink. RAMSA hired a company called Swenson Stone Consultants to investigate. Malcolm Swenson, the president, had a hunch, and checked his much-thumbed copy of "The Commercial Granites of New England," an encyclopedic guide published in 1923. Further sleuthing traced this particular pink to an abandoned quarry near Stonington, Maine, on a two-hundred-acre pile of igneous rock called Crotch Island."

The New-York Historical Society moved into its current Central Park West home in 1908, but the building ended up smaller than intended after funds ran out. The society failed three more times to complete its full envisioned scale. A $175 million expansion has begun, with construction having broken ground nearly two years ago. The expansion will add a new edifice adjoining the 76th Street side. Designers and project leaders sought the original Sherwood pink granite to match the 1908 façade. Swenson Stone Consultants traced the stone to an abandoned quarry on Crotch Island near Stonington, Maine.

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