'Fortress-like' Tribeca townhouse plan likened to Hannibal Lecter mask

This Tribeca building cost $20 million, but its owner apparently couldn’t buy good taste.

The city Landmarks Preservation Commission panned a proposal to turn 11 Hubert St. —  a former freight terminal — into a 17,000-square-foot abode with LPC members blasting its facade as “fortress like” and “almost Darth Vader-ish.”

A plan to clad one side of the building in granite was deemed “very mask like,” by LPC member Jeanne Lutfy speaking at a meeting last week.

“I hate to say this, but I sort of had this feeling like ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ — that mask Anthony Hopkins is wearing,” Lutfy said.

Manhattan’s Community Board 1 was even less kind in an advisory opinion, labeling the planned townhouse design as “a disaster and an affront” with a “penitentiary-like garage door and front entrance.”

“The street facade and street level is so hostile and unwelcoming that I find it almost unbearable,” Community Board member Bruce Ehrmann said, according to the Tribeca Trib.

The unnamed buyer, who purchased the property in November 2018, disregarded already approved renovation plans done for a prior owner by famed architect Maya Lin. That proposal would have resulted in the city’s biggest mansion complete with an indoor swimming pool, courts for basketball and squash, a 3,000-square-foot master suite and a garage for up to six cars.

Washington state architect Eric Cobb designed the latest proposal and the LPC sent him back to the drawing board. The building is in the Tribeca West Historic District.

Cobb did not respond to a request for comment.

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