By Jay Fox

The Three Arts Club first opened its doors in 1927. Designed by architect George de Gersdorff, the nine-story, steel frame Colonial Revival at 340 West 85^th Street was the first residential club in the United States to offer housing for women pursuing educations and careers in the “three arts”: visual arts, performing arts, and literary arts. It operated in that capacity until the early 1950s, when the building became the Brandon Residence for Women.

Though the building lost some of its elegance following its tenure as the Three Arts Club, it still contains a wealth of historic details that have largely been undisturbed for the past century. More than being ornamental or even adding to the character of the building, they also capture the kind of craftsmanship that was common in upscale buildings from the 1920s and the spirit of those times. Due to these elements’ excellent condition and the club’s contribution to the women’s rights movement, Three Arts was designated as a contributing building to the Riverside-West End Historic District by New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2012, and has more recently been listed on the registries of historic places by New York State and the National Parks Service.

The approximately 51,500-square-foot building also plans to obtain another designation in the near future: EnerPHit certified.

The second reason the city approached WSFSSH was because there were concerns that the building was going to be purchased by a private developer, gutted, and converted into luxury condos. As the city is already experiencing a shortage of affordable housing, especially in many parts of Manhattan, this outcome was less than desirable.

According to WSFSSH Director of Real Estate Development Nicole Marrocco, the opportunity proved serendipitous. Right when the city approached them with the offer, WSFSSH was about to demolish a shelter in a walk-up building on West 108^th Street and replace it with a new, larger shelter purpose-built for seniors. Before moving ahead with the project, WSFSSH needed a location where they could temporarily relocate the shelter while work was being conducted.

Redirecting individuals to Three Arts proved to be an ideal solution, so WSFSSH purchased the building, and operated it as a temporary replacement to the West 108^th Street shelter until work on the shelter was completed in 2022. Its role as a shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic also changed WSFSSH’s plans for Three Arts in several crucial ways.

As a result, WSFSSH and C+GA began exploring how to cost-effectively maximize the number of units and ensure the comfort and safety of residents. Several floor plans were proposed, but they ultimately decided to convert the existing floorplates, which are primarily one-room units with shared bathrooms and no cooking facilities, into efficiency units with private bathrooms and kitchens. Marrocco notes that it is the more expensive option, but that it allows residents to shelter in place more effectively and gives them more comfort and privacy to age in place, particularly when being visited by home health aides.

Once they opted to pursue the more extensive retrofit, they began exploring the possibility of Passive House certification through the Passive House Institute’s EnerPHit program. It was determined early on that PHI’s component pathway was the more viable route to certification. More than just providing residents with greater comfort and a healthier living space, they recognized that Passive House buildings can remain habitable even when the power is out and occupants are required to shelter in place.

“If there's a heat event and the power goes out, seniors who are living in this building will still be able to live comfortably for at least several days,” Marrocco says. Passive House buildings also stay warm in the winter because they are so airtight and well-insulated.

However, EnerPHit retrofits are tricky in any building, and Three Arts had several factors further complicating the plan. To start, Three Arts is within a historic district, which already places restrictions on permissible modifications to the building’s exterior. WSFSSH also recognized that state and federal historic tax credits through New York State’s Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) and the National Park Service would be necessary to make the project financially viable, and that preservation would oftentimes need to take priority over improved performance. Particularly on the ground floor, there are numerous rooms that have barely been touched over the last century, which meant that they could not be altered.

To see if it was even possible to both preserve the building’s many historic elements and enhance its overall performance, the team applied for Early Design Support through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s (NYSERDA) Buildings of Excellence technical assistance program. NYSERDA awarded the design team funding to perform a feasibility study, and they recruited Steven Winter Associates (SWA) to consult. SWA confirmed that EnerPHit certification was technically possible with the right strategy, so the team committed themselves to the retrofit, which led to an award as a demonstration project in Round Four of NYSERDA’s Buildings of Excellence Competition.

“I don't know how far we could have gotten…had we not had that early ability and financial backing by NYSERDA to study these things,” C+GA Associate Ryan Esparza says.

As of November 2025, construction on the 24-month project has just begun.

The Balancing Act

“Largely, the building is still the same as it was,” Esparza says. “The first floor still has these grand spaces. There's a wood paneled library off the entrance to the right,” he adds. To the left is a space that was likely a receiving room for guests. Continuing on, one enters a double-height ballroom that has a stage at one end and a balcony at the other. The ballroom also contains three double-height, arched windows that are double-hung and have never been replaced. The basement contains a commercial kitchen and a large dining room with a historic terrazzo floor that remains in good condition and will be restored to its Art Deco glory.

This leaves the historically valuable and original doors in a state of limbo, as they will be superfluous. Similarly, some of the older wardrobes, shelving units, and mirrors that had been mainstays in the bedrooms over all these years simply will not fit with the new units. Rather than discard these artifacts, some of them will be preserved as display items throughout the building, while many of the old doors will be installed in recesses along the corridor in their original locations.

The second and third floors are in a unique situation, as they were slightly modified after the building switched from the Three Arts Club to the Brandon Residence for Women. Most notably, the heating and cooling system was updated on these floors (though it is unclear exactly when), resulting in the installation of ductwork and ahistoric louvers directly beneath the windows. The team has decided to utilize the existing louvered openings rather than reverting to the original appearance of Three Arts, so that packaged terminal heat pump (PTHP) units by EPHOCA can be installed throughout both floors.

The heating and cooling systems on floors four through eight are a bit more complicated. The EPHOCA units will be installed in apartments that do not face West 85^th Street, as these secondary facades do not have the same level of protection as the primary façade. The team can make small penetrations for the intake and exhaust vents without running afoul of preservation rules. The units that face West 85^th Street will be equipped with mini-split units on a VRF system to avoid modifying the building’s primary façade. Meanwhile, all units will be on an air source heat pump system for domestic hot water and a centralized ERV system for ventilation. Storage tanks for the domestic hot water system will be located in an existing mechanical room, while air handlers, ERVs, and a limited number of condensers for the VRF system will also be housed on the roof.

Other significant changes to the building have less to do with performance and more to do with accessibility. An entry ramp will be added to the front entrance and vestibule, while a second elevator will be installed that services each floor. At present, the one elevator in the building does not go up to the penthouse floor nor is it large enough to fit a stretcher. The second elevator will be capable of doing both.

The penthouse, which has served as the superintendent’s residence for several decades (and was originally an art studio), will be converted into a community room with access to a roof terrace that offers views of the Hudson River to the west. To provide a second means of egress for the penthouse, the team will extend one of the building’s two stairwells to the roof. The bulkhead from that extension will then be connected to the penthouse by a canopy that contains photovoltaic cells, which represents an ingenious way to turn a regulatory nuisance into a benefit for the building.

As the roof does not have the same kind of regulatory restrictions as other parts of the building envelope, the team will be performing significant work to replace it. The non-terrace portion will be replaced with styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS) roofing, while the terrace will sit atop an inverted roof membrane assembly (IRMA). The average R-value across the two systems will be R-40.

The roof, like each of the floor slabs, was built out of cinder concrete with draped mesh. Now archaic, the technique was relatively common in major urban centers like New York City from the 1920s through the 1940s, with the most well-known example being the Empire State Building. In this kind of construction, wire mesh was “draped” over steel floor beams and set in place before being encased in concrete. As Esparza explains, the mesh acts as a tensile catenary system and does the lion’s share of the work handling structural loads. It is then capped with a topping slab.

The team will replace the roof’s topping slab and re-cover it with the new roofing assembly. However, the other floor slabs will be disturbed as little as possible, as the mesh wire needs to remain fully intact to avoid undermining the load capacity of the slab. One of the unavoidable challenges throughout preplanning has been strategizing the placement of ductwork for the supply and return air for the ERVs and the lines for the VRF system so that they do not disturb the wires. After all, the building has a relatively small floorplate and the efficiency units are quite snug, so there is not a lot of flexibility or room for error. This is yet another reason the team opted to use PTHP units for the apartments that do not face West 85^th Street, as they just need two small penetrations through the façade, electricity, and a condensate line.

Given the extreme complexity of the project and the need to balance preservation and performance, the ease with which these units can be installed is an enormous relief.

Overcoming the Challenges of Early Adoption

Despite its complexity, Three Arts represents a critical case study and WSFSSH’s former Director of Real Estate Development, Jenna Breines, recognizes how important the retrofit is. “We're excited that this building can be part of the historic preservation world’s efforts to embrace sustainability,” she says. However, she is quick to point out that there have been some speed bumps on the road to certification.

Most notably, Breines says that one of the most difficult issues has been finding consultants and certifiers. Even though New York is one of the leading markets for Passive House construction in North America, the expertise needed to certify a historic multifamily retrofit is lacking, and WSFSSH ultimately had to hire consultants from Vancouver. Given how many buildings need to be retrofitted in New York City, there needs to be more consultants who are based in New York. However, as a counterpoint, there needs to be more projects available so that professionals who have invested in upskilling actually have enough work to make the investment worthwhile.

In some instances, the lack of upskilling extends to building managers and superintendents. Breines notes that there is often a desire by engineers and designers to install extremely sophisticated mechanical systems, but that they need to bring in the people who are in charge of the day-to-day operations of the buildings early on to ensure they know how to keep them running and to troubleshoot when things go wrong.

Another challenge for any project of this scale and complexity is scheduling. Both Breines and Marrocco recommend building in extra time for reviews so that teams can adjust construction documents throughout design. Particularly with retrofits that include landmark protections, factoring in these kinds of cushions can help keep the team on or even ahead of schedule.

In terms of overall strategy for historic retrofits, Esparza recommends identifying the most complicated pieces of the puzzle as early as possible, recognizing limitations, and then working within those limitations. He also notes that building the right team is crucial, especially when the project is pursuing Passive House certification, historic tax credits, and is located within a landmarked district. The success he credits to his coworkers at C+GA, the folks at WSFSSH, preservation consultant Mary Kay Judy (Architectural & Cultural Heritage Conservation), and SWA.

“All of these people and groups that come with valuable experience, I think, has really benefited this project in immeasurable ways.”