To maximize daylight and views, the design team removed the western brick wall and the westernmost bay from every level above the first floor, roughly 1,600 sf per level. The new western wall’s steel moment frame, in conjunction with a new reinforced CMU stair and elevator core, provides the lateral and gravity system for the four-story steel and glass vertical expansion.
The Wythe Hotel, located in the formerly industrial neighborhood of Williamsburg, was originally constructed as a five-story brick and heavy timber factory building with unreinforced brick masonry exterior walls. Its various structural systems reflected its various past functions, which included a textile factory and a munitions factory. Its adaptive reuse transformed it into a nine-story boutique hotel.
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To maximize daylight and views, the design team removed the western brick wall and the westernmost bay from every level above the first floor, roughly 1,600 sf per level. The new western wall’s steel moment frame, in conjunction with a new reinforced CMU stair and elevator core, provides the lateral and gravity system for the four-story steel and glass vertical expansion.
This project’s primary structural design challenge was determining the optimal methods of connecting old to new. Silman tied each existing floors to the new lateral system at the core and west wall to provide supplementary lateral capacity to the existing building. The team also designed connections from the truncated lengths of existing heavy timber girders at the west wall to the new steel frames.
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Silman also provided structural engineering services for the new Tom Fruin-designed sign above the hotel’s southeast corner entrance.
Silman also provided structural engineering services for the new Tom Fruin-designed sign above the hotel’s southeast corner entrance.
