After the 2020 fire, New York begins rebuilding the historic Public School 23 at 70 Mulberry Street. Grimshaw preserves the facades and staircase, adds shared spaces and brings solar power and all-electric performance to a neighborhood landmark.
After the 2020 fire, New York City is rebuilding the historic Public School 23. Grimshaw preserves the facades and staircase, adds shared spaces and brings solar power and all-electric performance to a neighborhood infrastructure.
Construction at 70 Mulberry Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown began on November 10, six years after the fire that gutted the building and scattered five cultural and social organizations into temporary premises. The $184 million project, led by the City of New York and designed by Grimshaw, does not simply rebuild what was lost. It transforms the former Public School 23 into a larger, more accessible eight-story civic center, without erasing the parts that still tie the building to the neighborhood’s memory.
The date matters. The project announcement and the long process of community engagement belong to previous years; today’s news is that work has actually started. According to the NYC Department of Design and Construction (DDC) and the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, completion is expected in 2030. This opens a phase in which promises about preservation, environmental performance and the quality of shared spaces will have to become verifiable building decisions.
Preserving 70 Mulberry Street without freezing it in time
The original building, designed by C. B. J. Snyder and built in 1892, served as a school until the mid-1970s. It later housed the CPC Chinatown Senior Citizen Center, the United East Athletic Association, the Chen Dance Center, the Museum of Chinese in America and the Chinatown Manpower Project. The January 2020 fire destroyed the top three floors and forced these organizations to scale back or relocate their activities.
Grimshaw is retaining two stories of the historic facades and the original staircase. Above this base, the new volume does not pretend to belong to the 19th century: it introduces a contemporary language, terraces and energy-generating surfaces. It is a delicate balance. The project’s value will not rest solely on the visual continuity of the street front, but on its ability to make the surviving fabric a legible reference within a radically updated building.
The rebuilt structure will cover about 7,960 square meters. Of this, around 4,740 will return to the five organizations previously based in the building, while more than 1,530 will be devoted to new community uses. The city estimates a 30 percent increase in space open to the public. That figure turns the preservation question into a more useful one for the project: not only what to save, but how much space to give back to collective life.
A civic machine, not a collection of rooms
The program includes six community rooms, a new kitchen for the senior center and a double-height multipurpose space on the sixth floor overlooking Columbus Park. It will host performances, sports, receptions, banquets and classes, while landscaped terraces along Mulberry and Bayard Streets will let events spill outdoors. Altogether, the spaces will be able to accommodate up to 475 people.
Flexibility is not treated as an abstract formula. Combinable rooms, bookable spaces, shared offices and direct connections to the outdoors serve users of different ages, languages and activities. Three elevators, a new lobby and accessible restrooms also update a building that is more than 130 years old, elevating accessibility from a technical upgrade to an organizing principle of the plan.
Jennifer Wen Ma’s public artwork, Wings of Everchange 易之翼, is likewise built around the continuity between loss and future use. At its core will be a suspended sculpture about ten meters long, made of metal, glass and objects salvaged from the fire. Amber glass spheres will act as capsules for memories and stories; painted panels and an oral history component will complete the installation. Reuse here is not only about building materials: it extends to the fragments, voices and practices of the neighborhood.
Energy performance and construction method
The new 70 Mulberry Street will be fully electric. Its solar roof and facade-integrated photovoltaics are expected to generate up to 410 megawatt-hours a year, which, according to city estimates, equals about 30 percent of the building’s electricity demand. The project is targeting LEED Platinum certification, energy use less than half that of an efficient modern commercial building, and lower embodied carbon through reused materials and local sourcing.
These are targets stated by the public client, not measured performance: verification will come with construction and operation. But the approach is significant because it integrates building systems, envelope and historic restoration from the outset, rather than adding sustainability as a final layer. Operable windows and planted terraces work alongside photovoltaics and mechanical systems, linking comfort, ventilation and urban heat island mitigation.
The project also marks the DDC’s first use of the Construction Manager-Build delivery method outside libraries and emergency work. Grimshaw and Hunter Roberts Construction Group will therefore work with early involvement of designers and builders, a setup intended to reduce delays and resolve in advance the conflicts between the existing structure, new systems and construction phases.
For architects and public administrations, 70 Mulberry Street points to a clear path: heritage can remain recognizable without becoming a stage-set constraint, as long as the program grows together with the community that will use it. It is a theme that also runs through the recent Shoemakers Museum in Street, where reuse builds continuity between memory and new functions. In Chinatown the challenge is even more exposed: bringing identity, services, energy and the capacity to gather together in a single building. The construction site that has just opened will have to prove that public architecture can do this without reducing the past to a facade and the future to a promise.
