For a noteworthy 30 years, Helpern Architects acted as steward to The Collegiate School. The independent boys school on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, which traces its origins to 1628, was established by the Dutch West India Company and the Dutch Reformed Church for the colonists of New Amsterdam.
We completed several master plans over the tenure of four headmasters and provided the buildings and spaces to achieve them. They reconfigured Collegiate’s campus and added 10,000 sf to its facilities, which ultimately combined several structures, including an adjacent 12-story apartment house. The last master plan served as an informal pro forma as the school prepared to leave its historic home and move into dedicated space in a new residential development in the area.
Each division of Collegiate benefited from dedicated spaces that gave them their own identity. But we also created shared facilities to be used by the whole school that provided students and faculty with a sense of community.
One of several major assignments included a four-story rooftop expansion. Floor-by-floor sequential retrofits to the adjacent apartment building that the school owned took several years to complete.
The most dramatic change was the six-story-high, 9,100-sf “silver sliver” infill structure between two main buildings that enabled a horizontal circulation system for the complex and that also added needed space.
