Columbia University Faculty Residence and School for Children

Where some people saw a two-story Chase Manhattan Bank branch, a creative project team saw a 13-story, high-end school and residential building.

That vision is now the 160,000-sq.-ft. Columbia University Faculty Residence and School for Children, which wraps around the corner of 110th Street and Broadway in Manhattan with street-level entrances for the school, bank, residential portion and a D'Agostino supermarket. The project cost $66 million.

About 25 percent of the new 10-story, reinforced-concrete building rose over the 3,400-sq.-ft. footprint of the existing bank. And during construction, the bank stayed open.

The project team also planned around a corner subway station entrance that remained open and an Orthodox Jewish synagogue and Yeshiva day school next door.

The team worked only between 7:30 a.m. and 6 p.m.

"Keeping the bank open during construction of a building that had multiple uses was a major feat-especially in a neighborhood that can be difficult to work in," a jury member said.

Structural issues were a main obstacle. Though the bank building was designed for additional loading, its column layout and lateral load capacity were not suitable for new structure. The team reinforced the bank's columns with steel and high-strength concrete encasement in four locations and installed a pile system to reinforce the existing structure's foundation.

It also built a transfer floor above the bank roof that spanned 34-ft. steel beams along the columns-providing a bridge on which to build the new structure-while minimizing the depth of the beams by using structural steel and a metal deck slab for that floor. The team used reinforced concrete slab for upper floors.

Another structural consideration involved multiple functional needs for the school, a 650-seat K-8 facility, and for the 27 residential units with two to four bedrooms each.

The school needed expandable teaching spaces, requiring larger structural spans. But the column grids for the residences were fitted for smaller spaces. Meanwhile, several setbacks made some parts of the upper structure lighter.

The solution was to create a transfer slab at the sixth floor that had varying thickness from 18 in. right under a sixth-floor deck, to 24 in. under some setbacks and up to 30 in. under the tallest portion.

Other innovative solutions involved spanning a two-story-high gymnasium with 48-in.-deep girders, which lightened the structure. Installing those involved extensive coordination-and cost savings-by having the steel contractor use the concrete contractor's crane, temporarily reconfiguring the main boom to carry the girder weight during a phase when the concrete team was forming elsewhere in the building.

The façade emulates neighboring early 20th Century architecture, while distinguishing the building's functions. The retail portion is cast in stone, and the school combines brick and stone banding with larger windows. On top, the residential portion shifts into traditional brick face.

Masonry work took place during this year's winter, when only five days in January topped the freezing mark. Afterwards, a wet spring hampered roofing and caulking of the exterior.

Columbia University built community relationships by reviewing the project at each design milestone with the community board and by providing it with daily construction updates.