Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, NY. Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1891, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music.
The re-development project involved replacing the existing roof to create a green roof space, adding elevator framing and removing and adding floors in the North and South Towers. Most of the construction was completed with the venue still operational.
Although we were not an official Design Assist provider on the project, we created a design assist atmosphere after the tender award to ensure the best outcome with regard to both finished product and schedule.
We provided detailing and fabrication, as well as surveying and construction services.
Working on an historical building always makes for lots of surprises. As there were no existing drawings, we needed to be flexible in our approach and in many cases, plan on the fly as the building framework became exposed.
As an example, the original building was built in late 1800’s using cast iron columns which meant that we had to connect directly to cast iron.
ENGINEERING
In order to create a green roof, the building needed to support the extra weight being created by the gardens. The design was also intended to create an additional floor by using large trusses.
The original plan was to build the roof framing and then bring in pre-cast concrete through the open roof to build the intermediate floor that would be created between the concert hall and the roof.
We proposed a change in approach that was adopted to build the intermediate floor first using lightweight Sandwich Plate Systems (SPS) flooring and then create the roof. This approach saved over a year on the schedule and provided good protection from the elements during roof removal and re-build.
