Kate Reggev.
Kate Reggev, 33
Associate architect and historian at Beyer Blinder Belle
Kate Reggev didn’t discover historic preservation until her final year of undergraduate architecture school at Barnard College. The Scarsdale, N.Y., native loved architecture and history, but she didn’t realize she could fuse the two disciplines until she took a class on preservation at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).
After earning her master’s there, she did a stint at Fradkin & McAlpin Architects before landing at S9 Architecture, where she worked on a number of historic adaptive reuse projects, including the recently completed retail redevelopment of Admiral’s Row at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“The projects I work on at BBB are preservation with a capital ‘P,’ but some of the projects I worked on at S9 were adaptive reuse projects where the original building was less precious,” she said. “That was another really important way of understanding how existing buildings, whether they’re historic or not, still have life in them, and that revitalizing existing buildings is a core tenet of preserving buildings.”
These days, Reggev is working on sprawling, multiphase preservation projects. She is currently overseeing the design and renovation of the New York Public Library’s flagship branch, the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.
She’s also involved in the restoration and expansion of the Frick Collection on the Upper East Side. Beyer Blinder Belle is handling overall construction and renovation of the main building, a Beaux-Arts mansion originally built in 1914 for the museum’s founder. Annabelle Selldorf is designing the project, which includes new gallery spaces, a new auditorium and education center, a restoration of the 70th Street garden, and a new passageway between the main building and the adjacent Frick Art Reference Library.
Reggev also has a pretty active life outside of work. She is an adjunct professor at Columbia’s GSAPP, where she teaches the basics of historic conservation and research in a first-year preservation studio class, and serves on the program’s alumni board.
Besides her academic work, Reggev enjoys writing about design and architectural history for publications like Dwell, Architectural Digest, Elle Decor and House Beautiful. When she’s not working, writing or teaching, she likes to throw pottery, run and bake.
