By slicing the terminal south of Houston Street, the structure was opened to reveal the original railroad beds. (Image courtesy of Google)
Edited by Ron Bernthal / Description by COOKFOX Architects
In the early 20th-century, the massive St. John’s Terminal, on Manhattan’s West Side, served as the terminus of the New York Central Railroad’s West Side viaduct. Designed by Edward A. Doughtery, it was built in 1934 by the New York Central Railroad as a terminus of the High Line, an elevated freight line along Manhattan’s West Side, and used for transporting manufacturing-related goods. In its time, the terminal could accommodate 227 train cars. Google purchased the St. John’s Terminal building for $2.1 billion.
To accompany the neighborhood’s evolution away from its industrial past, COOKFOX Architects reimagined this historical infrastructure to become the next generation of a high-performance biophilic workplace for Google. Biophilic is a set of building principles that takes environmental impact and human biology into account.
COOKFOX cut the historic structure south of Houston Street, removing a dark tunnel and restoring the pedestrian connection between the Hudson Square neighborhood and the westside Hudson River waterfront. This strategic slicing exposes the rail beds and reveals the terminal’s history to the public. By highlighting this large-scale historical infrastructure, which was so crucial to the city’s development, COOKFOX grounded the building in history and place while providing a base from which to build a contemporary biophilic workplace.
Preserving such a large component of the original St. John’s Terminal allows the project to save approximately 78,400 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, compared with creating a new structural foundation.
St John’s Terminal view from Houston Street. (Image courtesy of Google)
The rail beds within St. John’s Terminal, revealed in the cut façade as if in a section drawing, now features a landscape that visually connects pedestrians and occupants to nature while enhancing the newly opened streetscape, designed in collaboration with Future Green Studio.
New floors rise above the existing structure that evoke the neighborhood’s working buildings.
Equivalent to two city blocks, the site now offers tremendous opportunity to enhance the Hudson River waterfront’s connection to its nearby neighborhoods of the West Village, SoHo, and Hudson Square. A new public garden to the north and landscaped alley to the south bookend the building, creating direct, welcoming pathways to Hudson River Park and extending the public green space across West Street and into the neighborhood.
With the building located directly off the Hudson River Greenway, we designed the space to encourage bicycle commuting, tying the workplace to a healthier and more sustainable commuter infrastructure through a large bicycle parking facility.
We designed the building to prioritize occupant health and well-being through multiple biophilic design strategies. Daylit interiors provide panoramic views of the city and the Hudson River. Blurring the boundaries between indoor and out, planted terraces and garage doors envelope three floors of the building and create direct connections to nature and seasonal cycles.
Workspaces include highly filtered outside air and biodynamic lighting, while building performance is improved by solar arrays and rainwater catchment systems designed to retain up to 92,000 gallons of rainwater. These strategies combined for the building to achieve LEED v4 Platinum Certification.
St Johns Park rail terminal, New York City, C @ 1937 (https://www.flickr.com/photos/syscosteve/54774513761937)
Collaborators: St. John’s Terminal was developed by Oxford Properties for Google. The project team also includes: Future Green, Gensler, AAI Architects, Gilsanz Murray Steficek (GMS), Langan, Philip Habib & Associates, VDA, BHDM Design, Dash Design, ICRAVE, Cooper Carry, New York Botanical Garden, Second Nature Ecology and Design, San Francisco Estuary Institute, Wildlife Conservation Society, Entuitive, Cosentini Associates, Robert Derector Associates (RDA), Structure Tone & Turner Construction, GHD Partners, William Vitacco Associates Ltd., Rizzo-Brookbridge, Jacobs Doland Beer (JDB), Cerami & Associates, Longman Lindsey, Fisher Marantz Stone (FMS), L’Observatoire International (LOI), Castelli Design, Lighting Workshop, Lightswitch, Downstream, Edgett Williams Consulting Group (EWCG), ARUP, Gardiner & Theobald (G&T), Charcoalblue, and CBRE.
