W. 79th St. Boat Basin Boathouse Gets Key City Approval

The West 79th Street Boat Basin is getting closer to undergoing a serious $90-million makeover, after the city’s Public Design Commission last month approved a proposed central boathouse for the marina.

The building has perhaps been the most contentious element of the marina’s planned makeover, which will consist of a broader 15-acre revitalization of the Hudson River waterfront, to be completed with assistance from FEMA.

The basin has been closed since 2021, after it sustained serious and lingering damage during 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, and is now expected to reopen in 2028 after construction is complete. Boater demand for the space is high, with a 15-year waitlist stretching to 1,000 names.

The NYC Parks Department estimates that construction permits for the project could be cemented by 2026.

The PDC’s approval was first reported by The Architect’s Newspaper, which noted that Superstorm Sandy “splintered” docks and seriously damaged the marina’s original boathouse.

The Brooklyn-based firm Architecture Research Office (ARO) will spearhead the creation of the boathouse, which will be elevated on nine pillars above the Hudson River. ARO is calling the proposed 3,800-square-foot building “a ‘floating’ beacon” that “meets the flood zone code and necessary accessibility requirements,” as well as “provides support facilities for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation’s operation of the long-standing marina.”

ARO further elaborates that the boathouse will have a “triangular pattern inspired by the city’s maritime vernacular, referencing similar forms in the historic 69th Street Transfer Bridge, the trusses of the George Washington Bridge, and a boat’s mast, rigging, and sails.”

It will also reportedly have bird-friendly glass, and will be largely invisible from the Henry Hudson Parkway, given that it will be surrounded by trees. ARO says the new boathouse’s “green roof” will make it seem indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape. It’s likely that ARO is stressing such design elements due to some community tension around the project’s aesthetic effect on Riverside Park, which will surround it.

Indeed, the boathouse overhaul has undergone several iterations since it was first proposed in 2019, before the marina was closed to the public. The PDC-approved boathouse is 61 percent of the size of the originally proposed one, as well as one story shorter than the most recent earlier iteration.

Some members of Community Board 7, which represents the area, had expressed complaints about the proposed boathouse’s size. CB7 ultimately issued an advisory resolution supporting the proposal this year.

The West 79th Street Boat Basin originally opened in 1937, and was part and parcel of Robert Moses’s West Side Improvement Project, which began in 1934; Riverside Park had essentially become a ramshackle and muddy expanse by the 1920s. Before it closed in 2021, the boat basin was the only marina in NYC that allowed year-round boat residency, inevitably ensuring that it became a key site for houseboat owners. Prominent celebrities also parked their boats there over the years, including Frank Sinatra and Mario Puzo, the author of The Godfather.