Tammany Hall sits prominently at the northeast corner of Union Square Park in Manhattan. The new building expands the usable square footage of the historic building and adds an iconic anchor to Union Square. The building’s former life as the last headquarters for the political machine, Tammany Hall, inspired a daring, iconic design that remembers New York City history while anchoring the Park with a proud monumental structure.
The origins of the Tammany organization include its namesake Chief Tamanend – the leader of the Lenape People – who signed a treaty of peaceful coexistence with William Penn in 1680. Using symbolism from the Lenape creation story, a glass dome inspired by the form of a rising turtle shell has been added to the building bringing an additional 30,000 sf to the interior. The contemporary dome is meant to symbolize Tammany Hall’s long-forgotten background as a populist social club, promoting a voice for all.
The restoration and expansion of the building includes sensitively preserving two façades, new bronze storefronts in the likeness of the original 1928 design, and a 3-story rooftop addition, composed of a self-supporting free form shell grid dome atop a reconstructed hipped roof of steel-and-glass with dappled gray terra cotta sunshades. Solar insulation, light infiltration, glare probability studies as well as investigation of glass dome precedents informed the glass mapping over the dome structure and the development of sunshades and other glass shading solutions.
The design was unanimously approved by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
