With thousands of SUPERSTRUCTURES’ projects across the five boroughs, you don’t have to travel far to find a building we’ve worked on. But a walking tour of our new neighborhood—the Financial District—offers a particularly rich cross section of structures we’ve helped restore, from historic churches to midcentury skyscrapers.

On this day in 1802, Richard Upjohn, designer of several notable Gothic Revival churches throughout the U.S., was born in Shaftesbury, England. SUPERSTRUCTURES conducted a restoration of the roofs of Upjohn’s New York masterpiece, Trinity Church, and the firm’s new office is just steps away from this National Historic Landmark.

There’s an inherent irony to SUPERSTRUCTURES’ work: a successful facade examination, restoration, and commissioning project often means you’d never know we were there in the first place. So we weren’t surprised that Masonry Design’s recent article on the restoration of 280 Broadway (aka The Sun Building) didn’t mention our role in the comprehensive restoration of the building. We’ll take that invisibility as a sign of another successful project.

We’re excited to announce that, as of December 14th, we’ll be up and running in our new offices at 14 Wall Street. While our physical surroundings are changing, our team’s phone numbers, emails, and website are staying the same. Our new home is in the former Bankers Trust Company Building. With this change of address, we’ll maintain some of the best qualities of our current location: proximity to a transportation hub to get to our various project sites around the city, an inspiring space with abundant light and high ceilings, and the architectural environs of a landmarked building.

Every roof has a utilitarian role to play. They serve as a building’s first line of defense against the elements, shielding the rest of the structure from water infiltration. But some roofs are more architecturally significant than others. Take, for example, that of City College’s Spitzer School of Architecture, site of a recent SUPERSTRUCTURES project.

On this day in 1860, Charles B.J. Snyder, designer of several New York City schools restored by SUPERSTRUCTURES, was born in Stillwater, NY. As an architect, engineer, and New York City Superintendent of School Buildings, Snyder’s legacy of hundreds of distinctive school buildings throughout New York City is strong and well preserved to this day.

SUPERSTRUCTURES has encountered some surprising and sinister figures glaring down from New York's parapets and facades. And not just on Halloween, but every day of the year. They menace our team with leering looks wrought in terra cotta, cast iron, and stone. The culprits? Gargoyles and grotesques.

On this day in 1981, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated interior elements of the Appellate Division Courthouse of the State of New York (James Brown Lord, 1899) as an official New York City Landmark. SUPERSTRUCTURES participated in a restoration project which included the historic murals of this interior, work that was honored with a Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award from the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

In SUPERSTRUCTURES’ practice, the essence of the Hippocratic Oath—“Do no harm”—is prime inspiration for our approach to restoration. This aphorism informs our entire approach, from non-destructive testing to precise design documents that minimize the invasiveness of necessary restoration procedures.

Local Law 11 is no longer a compliance hoop to jump through. Compliance in Cycle 9 requires a strategy, demanding consideration of your building’s construction type, geometry, condition, budgetary limitations, scheduling constraints, and current FISP status. So why SUPERSTRUCTURES? Because our professionals are strategists with the expertise and experience to help you meet the challenge of LL11. Exterior restoration is our territory–and has been for nearly 40 years.