Our project at Belvedere Castle has been moving along nicely. The AEC team – the Central Park Conservancy, Graciano, 53 Restorations, Indus Architects, and OSE – have been moving along with surprisingly few delays caused by site conditions. The showy part of the project is, of course, the fake-ruined castle that is the centerpiece of Belvedere, but there are other interesting parts.
The northwest pavilion is an open wood shelter on the main terrace level that is being altered, sort of. It was always meant to have a small tower and there was some kind of tower there originally, but the remnants of that were removed in a previous alteration. Our analysis for putting the tower back suggests why it wasn’t there: it was somewhere between very difficult and impossible to make the roof framing work if we only used wood structure, because the tower took the place of one of the main corner legs supporting the roof. Since it’s 2018 and not 1872, we used some steel and got everything functioning correctly; most of the wood structure is being maintained as the new steel supports are put in place to enable the tower. The picture above is a steel bent being fabricated in the shop. The pictures below are the bent is being hoisted into position and then finally in its permanent spot, next to the 140-year-old timber of the roof.
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