Harry S. Truman's chief architect for renovations, Lorenzo S. Winslow, gutted the place, reinforced it with concrete and then installed new crown moldings, fluted columns and carved eagles, stars and shields.
Despite his many hats, Mr. Chakrabarti finds time on Sundays to work with his wife, Maria Alataris, also an architect, on renovations for their home near Union Square and to relax with their 5-year-old daughter, Avia, and 11-year-old son, Evan.
A pair of architects orchestrate renovations.
I called a friend and neighbor, Amy Sanderson, a registered architect whose renovation of her own heavy-duty kitchen I admire.
Scott Duenow, a senior associate for Platt Byard Dovell White, the renovation architect, said, "We think the renovations to the facade will make the society more of an asset, architecturally, to Central Park West".
Throughout the rest of the historic museum, the arched galleries boast new nonreflective cases, state-of-the-art LED lighting and paint in contemporary gray hues by Jean-Michel Wilmotte, the architect behind the renovations at the Louvre in Paris.
One of the structure's most striking features, said Charles H. Henkels, a Manhattan architect overseeing the renovations, is the Queen Anne octagonal turret on the second floor, which was built in the 1890's.
The renovation architect is Meyer & Gifford Architects of Manhattan.
"I did not set out to become a museum architect or a renovation architect," he writes plaintively.
There is neither an architect nor a renovation plan, and she is vague about money.
