Rice Building to change hands

The Rice Building

The historic Rice Building is close to changing hands.

Luther Tai, an attorney from New Jersey, and the current owners – the Troy Architectural Program, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and First Niagara (formerly Troy Savings Bank) – have spent months guiding the final sale’s approval through the bureaucracy of state government.

While there have not been any bumps in the road towards that end, selling a building to a private entity that has had $2.5 million of public money invested into it does take a while. Thanks to Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno’s influence, the state bankrolled a big portion of the project that at the time was a unique partnership between government, academia and non-profit organizations.

Once the rehabilitation was complete, the building was opened for business in 2000 and it was largely filled with upstart tech businesses from the RPI incubator program. While the building maintains its stunning historic exterior character, the interior was completely modernized to accommodate high-tech companies of the 21^st Century. It remains filled with similar companies to this day.

Joe Fama, executive director at TAP, said he would not comment on the inevitable deal but didn’t deny it was in the works.

An undated photo or drawing of The Rice Building
before the Fire of 1920

(As an aside, few love Troy architecture as much as Fama and he and TAP spearheaded the effort to bring it back to life. Safe to say the sale would not happen if Fama didn’t approve of the buyer or the buyer’s plans, which I understand is to keep the status quo and make the necessary investments to keep the building structurally sound and technologically up-to-date.)

In May, 2013, Tai and his sister Lolly Tai, purchased 17 First Ave., home to the bar Footsy Magoos, for $340,000.

The now five-story Rice Building, according to the Preservation League of New York, which gave it an “Excellence in Historic Preservation” award in 2001, is a “rare example of high Victorian Gothic style in Troy with its use of Venetian Gothic elements, most notably pointed-arch polychrome voussoirs.” A voussoir is a wedge-shaped stone used to build an arch.

It was constructed as an office building in 1871 by Benjamin Hall, a poet and lawyer, and for a century or so was known as the “Hall Building. It originally had six stories with three spires on top, but the Fire of 1920 that ravaged a good portion of River Street destroyed everything above the fifth floor. There is some talk of Tai rebuilding the spires, but Fama would not comment on that or anything else regarding the potential sale.

In the 1980s the building was foreclosed for taxes and it sat vacant for more than 12 years. It was literally falling apart with reports of masonry falling off the building and crashing to the street below. The city was ready to demolish it when TAP stepped up and kick started the partnership that saved one of Troy’s most stunning structures.