Foundation work....

With my thesis defense finally finished, I'm finally getting around to another post about the site. Below are photos from the last 2 months sent by Yiannes and my dad, along with some I took on the one site visit I was able to make.

Foundation work has been moving forward with steady progress. In addition to the retention walls that I discussed in the last post, we've also been shoring up the neighboring foundations with shoring piles cast under their foundations. I was able to see various stages of this process during my site visit.

A backhoe is used to remove the dirt in a small area around the location of the pile to allow access to build a box in which the concrete is poured to make the pile. This is called "an approach pit"

Backhoe building an approach pit

The concrete mold is then built by hand from wood. The stone above the box is the bottom of the neighboring church's foundation. Its such an old building that it wasnt built very far into the ground.

Concrete mold for underpinning pile.

A concrete vibrator is used to remove air bubbles from the concrete after pouring:

Concrete vibrator

Once the concrete sets, the mold is removed. Here you can see a completed piling. Yiannes told me how they close the gap between the top of the poured piling and the bottom of the foundation but I can remember how now...

Two photos of completed piling and approach pit.

I will be making a trip over soon to check how this progress is proceeding but id imagine most of the shoring work is completed by now and we are on to pouring elements of the foundation now. Lots going on!

Here are few more images of the construction of the soil retention walls:

Drilling holes for the retention wall pilings

Drill bit

Completed soil retention wall on east side of site - note the pilings.

Shoring and foundation work begins!

Its been a few months since our last construction update as we've been waiting for permits from the D.O.B. and then for the holidays to pass to get the ball rolling on the foundation work. (Apparently, in NYC, you need to use an Italian carting company to remove waste spoil from foundation work and they don't work on holidays!)

As of this week, the ball is officially rolling and we are now putting the beginnings of the foundation in below street level. Holly and I walked by early on Monday morning and saw that the equipment was already in place to start work:

Drill and pile driver in place to start foundation work.

I've been really busy writing up my thesis so I haven't had a chance to go by the site for more pictures but Yiannes has sent me the following images to keep us up to date. 

The first step of the foundation work is to shore up the edges of the site by building soil retention walls around the building's future footprint. This will prevent soil from caving in from the neighboring lots as we dig down to put the foundation and substructure in. This is done by driving piles down into the soil at regular intervals and then adding wood planks between the pilings to form a wall.

The process begins by drilling a hole for the piling:

Drilling a hole for the shoring piling

The drill then converts into a pile driver:

Pile driver drives a 20' pile in.

The first pile is in, with a few feet left above.

First 20' pile is in!

 Yiannes models with the wrench that is used to add drill bit sections:

Yiannes and a big ass wrench.

Progress should be happening very quickly over the next few months and we will try to keep up with blog posts as frequently as possible. The next post will have more detail about the shoring and foundation process.

Street level and below...

Demolition of the old building is now complete and the site is down to street level. It is now an "empty lot" and we are awaiting on D.O.B. sign off before removing material below street level to begin work on the building's foundation. Here are a few pics of how things looked during a site visit yesterday afternoon:

From across the street, the progress on demolition can be clearly seen.
One can now see all the way to through the back of the lot.

Looking through the wooden fence protecting the site.

An empty lot on 16th street.
Looking South.

An empty lot on 16th street.
Looking North.

On both sides of the lot you can see that during the demolition, stucco has been added to the bricks of the buildings to stabilize them until our building goes up. Yiannes said that since the bricks and mortar on the building to east were never finished we could tell that the now-gone building on our site pre-dated our neighbors' building. This accounts for the roughness you can see here in the stucco:

Stucco on the stabilize bricks on our neighboring building to the east.

 In the previous post about demolition, we could see the bricks piling up in the basement. These bricks are now under all of the dirt that you can see in the open lot. They will all be removed along with the dirt when we start digging to make the basement and foundation. This little backhoe moved all of dirt from the back yard to cover and grade the whole site:

Finished with covering the bricks and grading.

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Lots of people asked me how the site did during Hurricane Sandy. As you can see, we were quite fortunate and everything was fine. Demolition was almost entirely done so there wasn't too much to blow around or fall over. Anything that could be blown about was tied down. More importantly, we were out of the main flooding areas of NYC so the site remained high and dry.

All the flooding did remind me of a post I saw a few weeks ago about the underwater rivers that still run below Manhattan. These are remnants of the rivers that existed here before it came one of the most densely populated islands in the world. Part of the post describes an amazing map drawn in 1865 by Egbert Viele that superimposes the original waterways and topographic features of Manhattan on the current day street grid. Apparently this map is still used to this day to predict potential issues for major building projects in Manhattan (high res version here).

At our site on 16th street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, you can see that there were no waterways. However, a river did appear to start just down the block on the corner of 16th and Sixth. The river merges with another small stream that ran right past the building I grew up on 19th and Broadway and runs through the village into the Hudson River.

Detail of the Viele map of Manhattan

Site inspections by interested parties

I didnt have a chance to go by the site this week but I did receive pics from two people who passed by the site and sent me some images from their phones. It looks like we are down to the street level and assuming the coming storm doesnt set us back too far, should be done with the demo to street level very soon.

First from my father:

Second, a site inspection by some of the future residents, Nina and Valery. Nina seems to approve of  the progress of her new place:

Demolition continues...

I had a chance to stop by the site today and see some of the demo in progress. Work is progressing quickly. They've taken down the top two floors of the building at this point and the shots on the 'roof' are taken on the previously existing second floor. In the new building, this will be about 5 feet below our third floor apartment. 

Workers removing brick on the second floor

Workers removing brick on the second floor

The majority of the demo is simply removing and then moving the bricks that made up the building's walls. There were 3 wythes of bricks making up each wall, so there are lots of bricks to be disposed of. Luckily, the building is so old the bricks are very easy to remove. (Yiannes was able to rip up a few bricks by hand with very little effort.) For now, the bricks are being collected and dumped down into the cellar level via a chute:

Worker dumps a load of brick down the chute to the basement level.

Upon visiting the lower level, you can see where all of the bricks are ending up for the time being. These pics are taken on the level above where the bricks have started being collected. So there are roughly 8 feet of piled bricks below us and what remains of the floors. We will bring a backhoe in to remove the bricks and for the excavation required for the foundation. Given the weight of each brick, this is a much more efficient way of removing them all at once:

Huge pile of bricks from the top few floors have filled the cellar.

Piles and piles of bricks

You guessed it: More bricks!

Back on the roof, you can see the other non-brick materials that have been removed have been sorted for recycling and reuse in the construction. All of the metal will be recycled and the large timbers removed from the floors will be used for shoring up during the foundation work. Also, the bricks will likely be reused or sold. Bricks like this are of a little value as they dont need to be transported as far if they are already in manhattan. This is not a trivial concern once you realize how heavy these things are...

Materials removed and saved for recycling and reuse in the yard.

Finally a few shots from what remains of the ground floor "parlor":

1st floor parlor level

What remains of the hallway on the first floor.

Oh, and the all important port-a-potty shot:

The Shitter.

 The next post should be of a good sized hole in the ground or at least the excavator removing the bricks.

Demolition has begun

Two quick pics of the top floor coming down at the end of last week:

Top Floor Demo - Facing North

Top Floor Demo - Facing South

A new project on 16th street

Welcome to the blog dedicated to documenting the construction of a new building and apartment on West 16th Street in Manhattan. Holly and I have been lucky enough to be part of this project to build a new building that will eventually have a new apartment for us. It is being led by my good friend Yiannes from high school who has built a few buildings like this in both Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The whole process started earlier in the year when we took a look at the existing building which we eventually bought from the church next door. The building was used a hostel of sorts for members of the church (its a french congregation) that were visiting the city. It was quite a dump at the time and for that reason is being demoed down to the foundation for the new larger building that is going to go up. Here are few pix from the first visit:

 124 West 16th Street

existing building

 From backyard

Our building is on the left

 Shot from the roof

 Alley to the east

Demolition of interior began in the summer

The interior was gutted entirely

Today I went over to visit and see the building one last time before demo began in earnest. There had been a bit of a delay in getting the permits for all of the scaffolding permits that we needed to put up all around the building both for demo and subsequent construction. The building to the east (left in the photo below) is owned by the state of NY and there was lots of red tape that needed to be cut through in order to get the permits. Now all is in place and walls should start coming down next week.

Building with scaffolding out front. 

To the left is the NY state owned building which is landmarked (and quite beautiful).

To the right is the church that we bought the building from.

 The church next door was built in the 1820s.

This is a view of their cellar. Note the vault construction. 

Looking up at the ceiling from the first floor of our building you can see the old wooden construction. It badly needs replacement, they found termite damage and lots of rot when everything was ripped up. 

 Looking up through the floor from the first floor, you can see all the way to the sky.

This is the stack of fireplaces. Im not sure you can make it out but you can see how the fireplaces were offset to allow the chimneys to all come out together in one stack on the roof.

Early fire safety - brick above the fireplaces to prevent the wood timbers from catching fire.

The bricks need some work...

Looking out to the backyard through the cellar grate. The size of the yard will be reduced in the new building but a yard will still be there

Installation of scaffolding over alley between our building and the NY state building. 

This was the element that took so long to get the go ahead on.

 Gutted second floor looking south. 

This is roughly where our apartment will be in the new building.

Top floor detail.

The roof above at one time had asbestos which was removed over the summer. Thats why its full of holes now.

 Third floor

View from third floor of the back yard.

A newly discovered window that was covered with plaster.

This window indicates that this building pre-dated the NY state building to the east. It was covered over after the building blocked the window on the lot line.

 Sidewalk bridge installation

A nicely placed no parking sign in front of the apartment will help with construction.

Thats it for now. Ill try to update this blog as often as I can. No promises though!

Ill be sending out automated emails when i put new posts up. Let me know if you want to be on that list either here in the comments or via email.

SG