Successful Construction

The new 21-story, 157,000sf building includes 105 condominium apartments, a landscaped outdoor terrace, fitness center, resident’s lounge and parking garage. The building achieves an aura of classical design with an exterior of precast concrete and precast brick panels, as well as nine-foot high windows that incorporate full height Juliette balconies.

Because of a small space between the building’s façade and the crane’s hook the construction team erected a crawler crane to pour the concrete superstructure and mount the panels. We used a monorail trolley system to place the precast panels in front of the crane along Park Avenue. This process involved manually detaching each panel from the hook and placing it onto the monorail. Each panel then slid down the monorail to its installation destination and was set in place.

Location, Location, Location

Another unique element of 45 Park Avenue is its location. Situated on the southeast corner of Park Avenue and East 37th Street, the structure is five blocks south from Grand Central Station and sits adjacent to the tunnels for two subway lines and the Park Avenue vehicular viaduct. The project team faced the obstacle of eliminating vibration disturbance to the subways while completing the foundation. As a result, the structural and geotechnical engineers modified their original plan of drilling cylindrical caissons into rock to incorporate the use of a concrete strap beam-button design, which complied with NYC MTA’s regulations. The buttons support the subway’s adjoining walls and load-bearing elements for the building.