Gilsey House: Keeping it Cool

Probably the biggest design challenge at the Gilsey House project has been the best way to heat and cool the apartment. This is not unusual: unlike the rest of the country, even luxury properties in New York rarely employ the simple forced-air heating and cooling systems that are the industry standard elsewhere. Just think about that huge condenser humming outside of every three-bedroom house in the suburbs, then imagine multiplying that times the dozens to hundreds of units in the typical mid-rise Manhattan apartment building and you'll understand why.

The ideal situation for this project would be to have some sort of central air-conditioning system that is zoned and easily controlled, resulting in a consistent temperature throughout the apartment. Such systems exist, but require both physical space in side the unit (at a premium here) and a significant amount of access to the exterior for the exhausting of heat. At Gilsey House, we neither have access to the roof for condenser units, nor think eliminating half of a precious window to accommodate the necessary large louvers would be appealing to the client.

Another solution is to install three HVAC units through the masonry exterior walls under windows along the east side of the apartment. These would cool each bedroom individually and the Living Room/Kitchen area, with the Gallery and Study relying on overflow from the three units. This would also allow us to avoid tampering with the historic cast-iron facade on 29th Street, which would be a non-starter with the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Getting the cut-outs for even these units will require permission from Landmarks, but it is permission that is more commonly granted, especially since we are disturbing a plain brick wall that is not part of the ornate facades for which the building is famous.

Finally, we will be rehabilitating the existing steam heat system (radiators) because this is heat that the owners are already paying for through their maintenance charges. Even in its dilapidated state, with drafts at every window and holes in the floor and walls, the radiators keep the apartment toasty on the coldest day.

Gilsey House: The Bid Process

One of the best lessons I learned from the ten years I spent designing buildings for public and institutional clients was using the competitive bidding process to the owner's best advantage. When you're working for a governmental client, finance laws often require a specified level of competitive bidding be applied to projects, both to protect against corruption and to help ensure that the taxpayers' money is spent wisely.

In that spirit, we solicited five bids (instead of the usual three) for the project at Gilsey House. The scope of work (replacing everything on the property, from floors to ceilings, windows to walls) suggested that contractor's bids had better be thorough and the client's decision needed to be carefully considered. With five bidders, we were able to immediately eliminate the highest and lowest bids, while still leaving three bids occupying the middle range to compare in more depth.

Of course, eliminating the highest bid is easy for the client; convincing them to also axe the lowest takes quite a bit of explaining. When we look at the three middle bids, all of which hover around the same median price, we get a pretty good glimpse at the actual, final cost of the project. Thus, even if that tantalizing low bid were accepted, I would prepare the client for an eventual construction cost that was more in line with that average of the middle three.

We also take great care to analyze the low bid to try and understand WHY the number came out low. After all, all of the contractors are local, drawing from the same labor pool and buying from much the same material suppliers. Deviations in subcontractor costs are to be expected, but within a reasonable range. In the case of the lowest-priced contractor on the Gilsey House project, careful parsing of the submitted documents revealed that the bid actually did not include many items that had been specified in the Contract Documents. Once we added the missing elements back into that bid, it started to look considerably less attractive. We also couldn't help but note that the omission of critical items from the bid did not bode well for that contractor's attention to the level detail that the project would require.

So with the three remaining bids, we coordinated with each contractor to hone their numbers down to work toward the client's budget, balancing internal cost savings with necessary scope reduction. This process is critical, obviously, for the project to stay on budget. But perhaps more important, it is a great way to get an idea of how each contractor will be to work with - how willing they are to sit at the table for as long as it takes to make the project work. We never want contractors to make promises that they cannot keep; the worst contractor is the one that's losing money on your job. Still, we want a partner that will work as hard as we do to make our clients happy.

Ultimately, we had three great bids to work with, that represented each contractor's best effort to meet as much of our client's needs as was possible. After that, the decision is both easier (they're all qualified and willing) and harder (they're all qualified, and willing!)

Gilsey House: Window Details I

The 29th Street windows are actually small dormers in the Mansard roof, thus they are narrower and higher off of the floor than we might have liked. For the renovation, we have been designed the window surrounds to help them feel as expansive as possible.

Plan view of the 29th Street windows
(the side walls are angled out to help widen the proportion of the window - this is called an embrasure)

The paneling pattern below the window is based on the two remaining panels we found from the 1860's building.

A section through a 29th Street window, showing the paneled embrasure

We carefully measured the remaining 1860's window trim to create the new window and door surround details.

Gilsey House: Public Rooms

Here's a look at some of what we have planned for the interior...

First, the public rooms:

THE GALLERY

East side of the Gallery

The Gallery's west side
(with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the former freight elevator alcove)

THE LIVING ROOM

The south side of the Living Room 

Door to the Study on the west side of the Living Room

The north side of the Living Room (facing 29th Street)

The east side of the Living Room

THE KITCHEN

The north elevation of the kitchen

The south elevation of the Kitchen
(which opens to the Living Room)

Gilsey House: History Lesson #1

A description from the building's website gilseyhouse.com:

Gilsey House was designed by Stephen Decatur Hatch for Peter Gilsey, a Danish immigrant merchant and city alderman who leased the plot – which included the grounds of the St. George Cricket Club – from Caspar Samlar for $10,000 a year. It was constructed from 1869 to 1871 at the cost of $350,000, opening as the Gilsey House Hotel in 1872. The cast-iron for the facade of the Second Empire style building was fabricated by Daniel D. Badger, a significant and influential advocate for cast-iron architecture at the time; the extent to which Badger contributed to the design of the facade is unknown.

The hotel was luxurious – the rooms featured rosewood and walnut finishing, marble fireplace mantles, bronze chandeliers and tapestries  – and offered services to its guests such as telephones, the first hotel in New York to do so. It was a favorite of Diamond Jim Brady and Oscar Wilde, Samuel Clemens was a guest, and it attracted the theatrical trade at a time when the area – which became known as the "Tenderloin" – was becoming the primary entertainment and amusement district for New York's growing population, with numerous theaters, gambling clubs and brothels.

Gilsey House closed in 1911 after legal conflict beginning in 1904 between the operator of the hotel, Seaboard Hotel Company, and the Gilsey estate over the terms of the lease. Parts of the facade, such as cast-iron columns, which went over the property line were removed, and the building deteriorated, with rust, water damage and sagging floors. In 1925, plans were filed to rebuild the structure as an ordinary loft building of brick and stone, but were never carried out, although the ground-level storefronts were modernized in 1946. The building's future was decided when it was purchased in 1980 by Richard Berry and F. Anthony Zunino and converted into co-operative apartments after a cosmetic cleanup of the exterior, which won a commendation from the Friends of Cast Iron Architecture. The facade was finally almost fully restored in 1992 by Building Conservation Associates.

The building, with its "extraordinary" three-story mansard roof  and its "vigor that only the waning years of the 19th century could muster" was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. It was designated a New York City landmark in 1979.

Some images from the New York Public Library Digital Gallery:

Note: the corner block of the building was changed substantially after conversion to commercial lofts in the 1930's

It is amazing how much the original window configuration suggested more verticality.  The 29th Street wing (where our project is located) retains the original window pattern.

Gilsey House: Preliminary Design

Before they found this apartment, we had spent over a year with our clients looking at other spaces. We would draw a few quick floor plan sketch options for each to make sure they would yield a home that could meet their needs - both practical and aesthetic.

Here is the Floor Plan from the Corcoran listing...

Here is our initial pass at a floor plan (after rotating it so that north is up).
We always show furniture in initial sketches, to make sure we have a grasp of each room's scale.

After more careful measurements, we drew the floor plan in AutoCad, adding detail.

Gilsey House: Hints of the Building's Past(s)

At first glance, the inside of Gilsey House offers little to the visitor curious about its history. But look closely and bits of the distant and recent past begin to come into focus...

We were wondering about the masonry bump in the west wall of the Living Room...

Could it have been a fireplace in an 1869 hotel room?

The blocked up opening led into the freight elevator
(added when the building was converted to commercial lofts in the 1930's)

These original accordion shutters are in the Master Bedroom.
They don't open (yet) but I suspect the hidden panels are louvered.

There is something sad about this very 80's sconce with its wan green light in the bedroom.

Looks like this was a fire pull of some sort? Mounted on the back of the electrical panel.

This is a somewhat mysterious piece of (audio?) equipment.

The bronze medallion from City College was used as a pull on one of the industrial light fixtures.

The verso tells more of the story...

Everything about this is classic late 70's/early 80's