The SCA, NYCHA, DCAS, DDC, HHC, PANY&NJ, OGS, DASNY, and US GSA. What do all these acronyms have in common? They all represent large agencies with multiple facilities, millions of square feet, and billions of dollars of value under their watch and SUPERSTRUCTURES has active projects for nearly all of these owners.

One of our mantras related to New York’s Facade Inspection & Safety Program (FISP) is “Fix, then file.” In other words: attend to the condition of your building’s envelope regularly and periodic filing of a FISP report becomes a formality.

A building’s landmark status isn’t synonymous with its preservation worthiness. Both pre-modern (“historic”) and modern buildings are the same to SUPERSTRUCTURES in the sense that we don’t discriminate between ornate, 19th century terra cotta facades and glass-and-steel curtain walls.

Spanning four blocks along the West Side Highway, the Borough of Manhattan Community College is a campus in a single, expansive building. Completed in 1983, it incorporates 79 classrooms and seminar rooms, numerous laboratories, three lecture halls, a library, a gymnasium, an auditorium, and a theater. This comprehensive academic facility has a complex envelope, incorporating multiple roof and plaza levels. In other words: not your typical roof restoration project.

NYU's 3-5 Washington Place is home to the University's Department of Philosophy. SUPERSTRUCTURES conducted a condition survey, produced construction documents, and provided construction administration to restore the brick, cast iron, brownstone, and terra cotta-clad exterior of this 1890 building designed by Alfred Zucker.

While we can’t claim to have X-ray vision like Superman, we do have tools in our Non-Destructive Testing and Evaluation (NDT&E) arsenal that give us the equivalent of superpowers. Infrared Thermography (IR) and Electrical Impedance (EI) scanning are powerful technologies that supplement visual observation.

One of the highlights of Charles Laughton’s moving performance in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) comes at the end of the film. Lovelorn for Esmerelda, Quasimodo asks one of Notre Dame’s famed gargoyles, “Why was I not made of stone like thee?” Broken hearts aside, we can relate: our restoration practice requires—and fosters—a similar architectural empathy.

At the end of the day, SUPERSTRUCTURES isn’t just an E/A firm; we’re also a technology firm. We do our part to shape the future of exterior restoration by maintaining our position at the forefront of technology, developing and implementing digital tools to better manage large, complex projects and offer greater value and efficiency to our clients.

Consider the crucial difference between “let’s eat, grandma,” and “let’s eat grandma"--a hyperbolic illustration of proper punctuation as well as a cautionary tale about attention to detail.

“Preparing for Terra Cotta Surprises,” Habitat’s recent interview on the restoration of two Upper West Side buildings suggests that clients might expect the final cost for a terra cotta restoration project to be triple the initial estimate. That certainly is a surprise –at least to us.