Archicritic James Gardner takes on the Platt Byard Dovell White Architects-led revamp of the Upper West Side's New York Historical Society, a $65 million renovation unveiled two weeks ago. He's not fooled by attempts to contemporize the museum, "such a stuffy institution that the word 'stuffy,' you could almost believe, was invented to describe its sober, silent and unchanging corridors and galleries." Most inexcusable? The "violence" done to the Beaux Arts auditorium, now a vaguely sleek space decked out in blonde wood. [The Real Deal; previously]
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