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Years ago, historian Nikolaus Pevsner famously pronounced that a bicycle shed is only a building, while Lincoln Cathedral is architecture. It might seem, at a glance, as if the Wall Street Ferry Terminal on New York's East River belongs to the first category. In many ways, it is functionally and typologically an overgrown bike shed. But as Pevsner noted, the difference between a building and architecture can be determined by the structure's engagement with space. In this case, the shed, or rather, terminal, designed by Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects, qualifies as architecture in the way it expands the sense of space with the thrust of its linear steel structure and the transparency and reflectiveness of its glass and metal planes. At the same time, it is functional in the good old Modernist sense of providing an array of open and closed waiting areas where Wall Street office workers may linger while waiting for private ferries to New Jersey, Brooklyn, and La Guardia Airport.
For the 2,815-square-foot structure, budgeted at $1.2 million, the architects have deployed an industrial vocabulary with straightforward panache. A steel frame, a glass-and-anodized-aluminum hangar door, a terne-coated steel roof, and galvanized, corrugated-steel paneling for exterior walls compose the main pavilion, while fiberglass- and-steel canopies cover open-air seating extending to the east and west. Most of the structural elements are...