The new Holiday Inn Manhattan-Financial District is lighting up the Wall Street neighborhood with a brilliant metal-paneled façade. Crafted from Reynobond® Aluminum Composite Material (ACM), the facade attracts and reflects light to brighten the street-level pedestrian landscape around it. The new hotel also provides a new superlative for Manhattan. At 50 stories tall, it is the tallest Holiday Inn in the world.
With tourism flourishing in Lower Manhattan, the architectural firm of Gene Kaufman Architect, P.C. of New York, New York, was retained to design a well-appointed, budget hotel to meet current market demands while maximizing the floor and area ratio (FAR) and the number of guest rooms. To achieve the design intent and maintain the project within budget, the façade composition was redesigned from an original of concrete masonry units (CMU) and masonry to a new design featuring Reynobond ACM panels over an engineered dry-seal system with metal stud framing, to create a much slender exterior wall and to help increase the interior space of the guestrooms.
Allied Specialty Group, Inc./Allied Metal of North Bergen, New Jersey, fabricated 115,000 square feet of 4 mm Reynobond ACM with a fire-resistant (FR) core finished in a Champagne Metallic Colorweld® 500XL paint coating for installation of the exterior walls, soffits and columns of the slender structure.
The Post Modern architecture of the building has a low-rise, contextual base designed to blend with the surrounding streetscape, rising into a dramatic tower featuring gradual setbacks. The Reynobond panels were installed on the façade in a pattern that runs both vertically and horizontally – to lead the eye up and, at the same time, accentuate the gradual setbacks of the architecture. According to the architects it wasn’t difficult to create a sense of verticality with a slender tall building erected from a small plate. The horizontal patterns were used to create a sense of balance in relation with other façade components.
Installing the Reynobond material going up 467 feet was challenging. The gradual setbacks of the architecture required frequent reworking and moving of swing scaffolding and mast climbers in a limited staging area. The metal panel joints are aligned from the bottom of the building to the top. The installation, facilitated by the dry-seal system’s patented locking progress, was completed in 10 months.
PG Drywall of Tuckahoe, New York, worked with Allied Metal’s patented 3000 Estolga® Dry Seal Gasket system to install the Reynobond composite panels. An open V-joint system with snap-in silicone gasket, the Estolga 3000 Dry Seal System (110 PSF) exceeds the New York Building Code requirements of 92 PSF and is fully ASTM tested for structural capacity, thermal expansion/contraction, water and air infiltration and temperature performance. The system profile progress was able to work with attachment and panel with 1.5-inch space due to limited space air rights.
Cava Construction and Development, Inc. of New York, New York served as the General Contractor for the project.
The 176,000 square-foot, 50-story hotel, adjacent to the new World Trade Center and Wall Street Financial Center, houses 494 guest rooms, a fitness center and full-service restaurant. Rooms have sweeping views of the Hudson River and One World Trade Center.