NEW YORK’S HISTORIC BUCKINGHAM HOTEL RECONCILES MODERN DESIGN

WITH ITS CENTURY-OLD CLASSICAL MUSICAL HERITAGE

NEW YORK, December 24^th, 2004 -- A silvery concerto swells from without.  Miniature tinted spotlights shoot up from the floor grids. A suggested piano forms the front desk.  Commissioned deconstructed-musical-instrument installations are inset in the walls.  Carnegie Hall style red velvet handlebars beckon from an idling elevator.  The anthropomorphic “Dancing King” hangs from the centerpiece stained glass entryway.  And the piece d` resistance:  an electric blue tablature which backdrops the Patron’s Lounge. 

Such are the public areas of the classical music design themed Buckingham Hotel which, for nearly a century, has housed the likes of Van Cliburn and Ignacy Paderewski.  History repeats itself as classical legends of today – such as Lang Lang and Yo Yo Ma – continue to join the guest book registry.

The old-school hotel suite belonging for decades to the late Paderewski – composer, pianist and first Prime Minister to a free Poland – now lives, restored and intact, in the Polish American Museum.  Meanwhile, the historic Buckingham emerges from a multimillion dollar modernization, all the while never betraying the classic music legacy that lives on. 

“I always prefer to design with a strong underlying concept, and the Buckingham’s classical music heritage provided just that,” said Paul Taylor of Stonehill & Taylor Architects and Planners, a New York based architecture and design atelier.  “The classical music theme is an ideal foundation – suggesting the materials, rhythm, space, sequence and mood that went into the redesign of this property.”

About the Buckingham Transformation

When Taylor first considered redesigning the Buckingham Hotel, he was struck by the way music played a big part of both the building and its environs. With the art of music already represented and a building designed during the arts and crafts movement, Taylor saw the multimillion redesign of the facade, lobby and public areas as the perfect palette to highlight arts of many forms.

So, after brainstorming with hotelier Stephen Shapiro, Taylor collaborated with four artists, three of them graduates of the New York Studio School, to create a chic, imaginative installation.  The three artists from the Studio School created 11 boxes with musical-themed collages. The team was overseen by Graham Nickson. Jose Ortega, the fourth artist, played off the arts and crafts period in creating stained glass to highlight the hotel’s entry.

While the artists were busy on their projects, Taylor was choosing materials that also reflected the musical theme. Examples can be seen in the ebonized ash-covered walls of the 40-foot hallway, which are evocative of a Steinway piano. The lobby itself is paneled with fiddleback anigre, in the same style and coloring as the back of a violin.  The classical theme is evident even in the reception desk of black ebony with the curve of a grand piano.

The gold leaf lobby ceiling, similarly, is reminiscent of those in concert halls. And, rather than having strong lights beam down from the ceiling, Taylor installed lights in the floor. The lights, which shine through glass, change color at the flick of a switch, enabling an easy mood change.

"Every time I go there, it`s a different color,`` Taylor said. "You can be as creative as you want.``

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Part of the redesign involved moving the original entrance door about 20 feet to the east. The goal was to create a wider, more regal entryway. But in doing so, a structural pillar had to be installed. Rather than a utilitarian post, Taylor designed a black obelisk that appears to have starlight floating inside. The starlight effect is derived from glass tile with gold leaf gleaming through.

The guest lounge, called the Patron`s Lounge after similar spaces in concert halls, is in a lush red wall covering to emulate the velvet of the grand halls of bygone eras.  The focal artwork there is a Paderewski score in the composer`s handwriting sandblasted into a 4 x 9 foot piece of glass.

The Buckingham redesign filled a long-held goal of Taylor`s to combine art and architecture as was done from the time of the Beaux Arts through the early part of the 20th century.  The notion of having artists and architects collaborate on a finished product dropped in popularity, he said, when architects began considering themselves to be artists so there was no need to include other artists.

For more information visit the Buckingham Hotel Web site at http://www.buckinghamhotel.com/

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