Masonry Magazine September 1972 Page. 25
24,000 Granite Slabs
Face New York
Telephone Building
Precast panels, produced in full-story heights and weighing nine-tons each, are erected to heights reaching 535 feet. Contractor reports 85% reduction in material handling on the job site by utilizing new technology developed by Plasticrete Corporation.
Some 475,000 square feet of granite, quarried and fabricated in Quebec, were installed using a technology developed by Plasticrete Corporation. The finished panels, measuring 9 ft. x 18 ft., were erected by ground cranes for the lower nine floors of the windowless 40-story-equivalent building.
The New York Telephone Company's recently completed Long Lines Equipment Building on lower Broadway in New York City is not only a startling innovation in urban architecture, but to Plasticrete Corporation, the 40-story-equivalent, granite-faced building represents a monument to problem-solving on a giant scale.
The new 800,000 square foot structure is entirely windowless and covered in natural stone quarried and fabricated in Quebec, Canada. The only glass used in the building are the rest room mirrors.
According to Philip Paolella, president, Plasticrete's Allied Building Systems subsidiary was selected by Turner Construction Company, the general contractor, to manufacture, erect and do the testing and testing evaluation of the technology aspects of attaching some 24,000 granite slabs to nearly 5,000 precast concrete panels; and then to solve the problems of handling and erecting nine-ton panels to heights reaching 535 feet.
Aside from visual and aesthetic effect, precast panels of this type in high-rise construction offer significant savings to builders and owners, Paolella says.
"What's more, by producing panels in full-story heights," he notes, "we reduced the handling of individual pieces on the job-site by approximately 85%. If conventional techniques had been used to set the granite, such as mounting the stone directly to a steel frame structure, completion could have been delayed by at least a year."
Working under the direction of the architectural firm of John Carl Warnecke, FAIA, and the engineering firm of Weiskopf and Pickworth, Allied began testing the granite panels in 1968 to ascertain, among other things, the effects of temperature, sudden temperature changes, and humidity. The study program took six months.
"To our knowledge," Paolella says, "this was the only full-size testing ever done on composite stone and precast panels."
Using some of the experience gained when Plasticrete had a somewhat similar assignment involving granite-clad panels for the CBS Building in New York some years ago, actual production of the panels was begun in 1969 in the company's Newington (Conn.) plant.
Approximately 400,000 square feet of natural stone, carefully selected by the architect for color, were trucked from the quarry in Quebec to Connecticut for anchoring.
The two-inch-thick precast panels were selected by the architect, John Carl Warnecke, FAIA, for color and also were used on portions of the building's interior. The story-height granite slabs were attached to precast concrete panels.