300 East 50th Street, Manhattan

Location300 East 50th Street at Second Avenue, Turtle Bay, Manhattan

BuildingNew multi-storey rental building (Anagram Turtle Bay); ground-floor retail and residential entrance

ScopeNew curtain wall across the ground floor, single and double entry doors, louver system above the glazing, canopy wrapped in aluminium composite panels

FrameAluminium curtain wall in a dark bronze finish; doors and louvres in the same finish

GlazingLarge fixed lites, one per bay, framed by the building’s brick piers

VentilationContinuous louvred panel in the head of each glazed bay, framed into the curtain wall

CanopyResidential entrance canopy at “300” clad in dark aluminium composite panels — fascia and soffit

RoleAlex GC: supply and installation of the curtain wall, doors, louvres and canopy cladding

Scope of Work

300 East 50th Street is a new rental building on the corner of Second Avenue in Turtle Bay, and this project is its ground floor: the part of a building that people actually touch. The brief was a new curtain wall along the street frontage, entrance doors in a combination of single and double leaves, a louver system above the glazing for ventilation, and the entrance canopy wrapped in aluminium composite panels. We supplied and installed all four as one package, in one dark-bronze finish, so the whole ground floor reads as a single piece of work against the buff brick above it.

Why a curtain wall at ground level

The bays between the brick piers are tall and wide, and the owner wanted each one to be a single sheet of glass rather than a grid of smaller lites. That is a curtain wall job, not a storefront job: the framing has to carry a large lite on its own, sit flush in a deep masonry opening, and be anchored back to the structure at the head and sill rather than relying on the sill alone. The mullions are kept to the perimeter of each bay, so from the sidewalk the glass runs pier to pier with nothing crossing it. The difference between the two systems is worth understanding before you specify a ground floor like this one; the glass sizes decide it.

Several of the bays are currently used as leasing displays, with printed graphics behind the glass. That is exactly what a large fixed lite is good for: the graphic is read as one image, and when the retail tenant fits out the space the same glass becomes a display window without any change to the framing.

Single and double entry doors

The doors are hung in the same system and the same finish as the wall. Where the frontage needed a wide, two-way entrance — the main retail entry and the leasing entry on the avenue — we used double-leaf doors so the full width of the bay is usable. Where an opening only needs to pass one person at a time, a single leaf in a glazed frame does the job with less hardware and a smaller leaf to keep aligned over the years. Each door frame is set into the curtain wall as its own module, so the door can be adjusted or re-hung later without disturbing the glass beside it. The residential entrance under the canopy is a pair of full-glass doors with the building number above them.

The louver system above the glazing

A ground-floor retail space needs air in and out — for the mechanical equipment that serves it and for whatever the tenant installs later — and the usual answer is to cut holes in the brick. Here the ventilation is handled inside the curtain wall instead: a continuous horizontal louvred panel sits in the head of each glazed bay, directly above the glass, framed by the same mullions and finished in the same dark bronze. From the street it reads as a band at the top of the window rather than as a grille bolted to the wall.

The point of doing it this way is coordination. The louver opening is set in the curtain wall shop drawings from the start, so the size and position are fixed before the frames are cut, and the mechanical trade knows exactly what it is connecting to. The glass line and the louver line share one head member and one sill, so there is one set of flashings and sealant joints to maintain rather than two systems meeting awkwardly in the brick. When a tenant fits out the space and needs the intake or exhaust connected, the opening is already there and already weathered.

Canopy wrapped in aluminium composite panels

The residential entrance sits under a flat canopy that projects over the sidewalk. We clad it in dark aluminium composite panels — fascia and soffit — so the canopy matches the curtain wall below it instead of reading as painted steel. ACM is the right material for this: it is light, it can be folded around the edge of the canopy so the fascia and soffit are one continuous skin with a crisp corner, and the factory finish is the same across every panel. The building number is mounted on the fascia, and the panels are laid out so the joints fall symmetrically around it. The same material is described on our aluminium composite panels page, and we used it across a whole street front on Flatbush Avenue.

One finish, one package

Curtain wall, doors, louvres and canopy cladding are four different products, and on many jobs they arrive from four different suppliers in four slightly different browns. Here they came from one contractor in one finish, detailed together, so the joints between them were designed rather than improvised on site. That shows in the photographs: the door frames, the louver bands and the canopy soffit sit on the same lines and the same colour, and the brick piers do the rest. It is the same approach we took on the ground floor of 2 Bushwick Avenue and on the Frederick Douglass Boulevard facade, where curtain wall and composite panels were again one coordinated package.

Photographs

Photographed from the sidewalk on East 50th Street and Second Avenue after installation, with the building leasing and the ground-floor retail spaces still to be fitted out.

Ground-floor curtain wall at 300 East 50th Street, Manhattan: large glazed bays in dark bronze aluminium between buff brick piers, a leasing sign band above the glass, and an entrance door along the Second Avenue side — The run of curtain wall along the avenue: one large lite per bay between the brick piers, the entrance door set in the same framing, and the leasing sign band across the head of the glazing.

Residential entrance canopy at 300 East 50th Street clad in dark aluminium composite panels, with the building number 300 on the fascia and a pair of full-glass entry doors below — The residential entrance: the projecting canopy wrapped in dark ACM on fascia and soffit, the number 300 on the fascia, and the pair of full-glass doors beneath it.

Louvred ventilation panel framed into the head of a curtain wall bay above a large fixed lite at 300 East 50th Street, Manhattan, all in the same dark bronze finish — The louver system above the glazing: a continuous louvred panel in the head of the bay, framed by the same mullions as the glass below and finished to match.

Double-leaf aluminium entry doors in a dark bronze frame set in a brick opening at 300 East 50th Street, Manhattan, with a sign panel in the transom above — A pair of double-leaf doors in the brick opening, with the sign panel filling the transom above; the tenant’s graphics are on the glass.

Corner of the ground-floor curtain wall at 300 East 50th Street, Manhattan, showing the leasing entrance double doors, a single door further along, and the sign band over the glazing — The corner from the street: the double doors of the leasing entrance, a single-leaf door further along the frontage, and the sign band running over the glass.

Single-leaf entry door in a dark bronze aluminium frame set in the brick at 300 East 50th Street, Manhattan, with a glazed curtain wall bay and planters beside it — A single-leaf door in the brick, with a glazed bay and the planting beds beside it; the door frame is the same section and finish as the wall.

Large fixed glazed bay of the curtain wall at 300 East 50th Street, Manhattan, with a printed display graphic behind the glass and wall sconces on the brick piers either side — One bay, one lite: the display graphic reads as a single image behind the glass, with the brick piers and wall lights framing it.

Run of ground-floor curtain wall at 300 East 50th Street, Manhattan, seen along the sidewalk, with the leasing sign band above continuous glazed bays — Looking along the sidewalk: the glazed bays continue under the sign band, the head line and sill line held straight from pier to pier.

Glazed corner bay of the curtain wall at 300 East 50th Street, Manhattan, in a dark bronze frame with the round building sign mounted on the brick pier beside it — The corner bay with the building’s round sign on the pier: the glass carries the reflection of the street, the frame stays a thin dark line at the edge.

Project Video

Walking the new ground floor along East 50th Street and Second Avenue after installation: the curtain wall bays, the louvred heads, the entry doors and the ACM-wrapped canopy.

More project videos on our YouTube channel.

Similar Work and Related Specifications

Curtain Wall Systems · Storefront & Entrance Doors · Aluminium Composite Panels · Storefront vs Curtain Wall · Our Work in Manhattan · 2 Bushwick Avenue — Curved Ground-Floor Curtain Wall · 2535 Frederick Douglass Boulevard — Curtain Wall and ACM · Grand Prix Custom, Flatbush Avenue — ACM Facade

Planning Something Similar?

A ground floor that needs large glass, entrance doors, ventilation and a clad canopy is one job, not four. Send us the elevation or a few photos of the openings and we will survey, detail the curtain wall with the louvres and doors built in, and quote the whole package.

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300 East 50th Street, Manhattan — Ground-Floor Curtain Wall, Entry Doors, Ventilation Louvres and ACM-Wrapped Canopy