Behind the Glass: 21 West End Avenue (Riverside Center Building Two)

Unlike Hudson Yards, which was built above an active railyard, the Riverside Center projects are being built atop a former railyard. The eight-acre parcel on the upper west side will include a variety of housing complexes, retail centers, and restaurant establishments. We recently completed another building at Riverside South called One Riverside Park (Riverside South Building K1).

21 West End Avenue will be a mix of market-rate luxury rental apartments, affordable housing units, retail space, and a public school. The client is the Dermot Company, Inc., and SLCE is the architect. The podium curtain wall and punched windows were designed and supplied by Erie Architectural Products, Inc. with 1-⅜-inch glass manufactured by Viracon and installed by W&W Glass. The project broke ground in early 2014 with an expected completion date during the summer of 2016.

Above, you can see the custom Sotawall® HYBRID-WALL® system panels, with 1-⅜-inch Viracon insulating glass units, being installed. This gives the building a classy, sharp aesthetic that defines recent trends in skyscraper design.

This project was unique because the top four rows of curtain wall at the crown of the building do not have any floor slabs to work off of (as you can see in the picture, there are only concrete beams creating a skeleton). This required unique staging and installation applications. In order to complete the project, a custom monorail had to be created, designed by Greg Beeche (GBL) and installed by W&W Glass. It follows the profile of the building and was used to complete the installation of upper rows on all all four sides all the way up to its peak.

Below is a photo of the facade nearing completion, rising above the Upper West Side of New York City. Notice how the facade goes all the way to the top of the building. W&W Glass was chosen for the project because of our ability to find solutions to unique challenges like 21 West End Avenue (Riverside Center Building Two). The world of glass is always updating and changing, and we keep up by using innovative technology to achieve the client’s goals.

Keep an eye on our website and social media outlets for continued updates on this and other projects we are working on at Riverside Center, as well as all the other monumental projects throughout the New York City area.

W&W Glass LLC is a family owned business with a 70-year history in the metal and glass industry, one of the largest metal and glass companies in the New York metropolitan area and the largest supplier of structural glass systems in the country. We have over two decades of experience in the design and installation of various building enclosure systems, including stick-built curtain walls, pre-glazed unitized curtain walls, Pilkington Planar™ structural glass facades, and custom metal and glass enclosure systems. We install all of our work with our own dedicated union labor force. W&W is consistently the largest employer of glaziers in the NY metropolitan area.