Architect Restores and Repurposes in Warwick and Port Jervis
Joe Irace lives in a repurposed Warwick grain tower and is working on a Port Jervis history project.
What first inspired Joe Irace to study architecture, when he was growing up in Queens, was the TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport that looks like a bird in flight. Now, decades later, he has been asked to design a building to re-invigorate a defunct train hub that has become the Port Jervis Transportation History Center.
Repurposing is part of Irace’s history as well as his future. His home and office occupy a repurposed grain tower on Elm St. in Warwick, in which he built four floors two years ago. The first floor is his office; the second is a living area; the third has bedrooms; and the fourth floor is the “common room.”
The building had been unused for two decades. A restaurateur bought the structure intending to have Irace design a restaurant to build into it, but the project stalled, and Irace bought the tower for his own vision.
“Repurposing is the green way to go,” he said, noting the repurposing of unused New York City offices for residential space and, in Europe, buildings thousands of years old being used for market places. once they are “brought up to code.” His father was a building inspector in the Catskills.
The antique Port Jervis train turntable that has stood idle for decades, though still operable, is now the focus of plans for the Transportation History Center that opened last year. Port Jervis was recently awarded the $10 million New York State Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant, and a committee is discussing how the money will be spent. A roundhouse for the turntable is one targeted use, said Mike Ward, president of the Outdoor Club of Port Jervis, who oversees the Center development for the city and is on the committee.
“We’ll be signing up with Joe Irace for detailed drawings this coming week,” said Ward.
The History Center repurposes lingering nostalgia for the railroad town that Port Jervis once was. The Center has 21 old train cars, some in the process of refurbishment; others, in addition to being objects of interest themselves, are being used to display railroad memorabilia and artifacts and will be used as stages for film screenings and music and theatrical performances, Ward said. Dining cars have begun to be used for dining events.
Ward brings to the project expertise from doing lights and wiring for Broadway productions for 35 years. He and his Outdoor Club cohorts have developed 60 miles of forest trails in the nearby watershed and a pump track and disc golf course in Riverside Park, all of which have drawn events and a surge of tourists to Port Jervis after some troubled years for the city.
The old turntable, used to turn train engines around and put them back on the track after refueling and servicing, will be the “anchor” of the new project, a roundhouse with seven bays for train cars, Irace said.
“ Now the turntable is like a pit,” he said.
But he and Ward envision it lit and landscaped, with a park on one side, between the turntable and nearby commuter trains, and the roundhouse on the other side, with its seven doors for the seven bays. The main building, the roundhouse, with a polished cement floor, would have a sloped roof and a viewing platform on the second floor. This vision will likely take four or five years to actualize, Ward said, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will require certainty that the grounds are not contaminated by oil and fuel from the many years of railroad use.
Walkways are planned for the park area between the commuter train and the History Center that would lead into downtown Port Jervis. Eventually, the long term plan includes trolleys that would take commuters downtown or into the hills where trails continue to be developed.
“The trolleys would have to be electric, and that would cost much more money,” Ward said of the idea proposed years before by William Schill.
Meanwhile, the Tri-State Railway Preservation Society uses box cars for their exhibits of train artifacts and memorabilia, including two 70-foot box cars, one with a model train of the Hoboken to Port Jervis line along one wall and artifacts along the other.
Community focused news can only succeed with community support. Please consider the various subscription levels.