Dream Downtown Hotel
Handel Architects converted this Albert Ledner-designed office building into one of New York City's most recognizable hotels.
The Dream Downtown Hotel is a 184,000 sq. ft. boutique hotel in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. The 12-story building includes 316 guestrooms, two restaurants, rooftop and VIP lounges, outdoor pool and pool bar, a gym, event space, and ground floor retail.
Dream sits on a though-block site, fronting both 16th and 17th Streets, and is adjacent to the Maritime Hotel, which sits adjacent to the west. In 1964, the National Maritime Union of America commissioned New Orleans-based architect Albert Ledner to design a new headquarters for the Union, on Seventh Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets. Two years later, he designed an annex for the headquarters on the site where Dream currently sits. A few years later, Mr. Ledner designed a flanking wing for the annex, which would eventually be converted to the Maritime Hotel. In the 1970s, the Union collapsed and the buildings were sold and used for various purposes in the years that followed. Covenant House, one of the ensuing owners, engaged in a series of tacky renovations, covering both the 16th and 17th Street facades in a beige stucco.
In 2006, Handel Architects was engaged to convert the complex into the Dream Downtown Hotel.
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Site History
Albert Ledner's original 1966 building.
The building served as an annex for the headquarters, which was located on 7th Avenue.
The facade was later covered in beige stucco.
The 16th Street facade was blank stucco.
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The "otherness" of Ledner’s 1966 design was critical to preserve.
Along the 17th Street exposure, the sloped façade was clad in stainless steel tiles, which were placed in a running bond pattern like the original mosaic tiles of Ledner’s Union building. New porthole windows were added, one of the same dimension as the original and one half the size, loosening the rigid grid of the previous design, while creating a new façade of controlled chaos and verve. The tiles reflect the sky, sun, and moon, and when the light hits the façade perfectly, the stainless steel disintegrates and the circular windows appear to float like bubbles. The orthogonal panels fold at the corners, continuing the slope and generating a contrasting effect to the window pattern of the north façade.
The 16th Street side of the building, previously a blank façade when the building served as an annex, was given new life.
The skin is constructed of two perforated stainless steel layers, its top sheet of holes a replication of the 17th Street punched-window design and the inner sheet a regular perforation pattern. The outer rain screen is punctured with porthole-shaped Juliet balconies for the guestrooms and peels up at the ground level to form the hotel canopy and reveal the hotel entrance.
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Four floors were removed from the center of the building, which created a new pool terrace and beach along with new windows and balconies for guestrooms.
The glass bottom pool
allows guests in the lobby glimpses through the water to the outside (and vice
versa) connecting the spaces in an ethereal way. Light wells framed in teak
between the lobby, pool and lower level levels allow the space to flow.
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Interiors, by Handel Architects, were designed to continue the limitless feeling of space throughout the guest experience.
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