Located at 606 West 57th Street, this nearly completed 1.2 million-square-foot building is one of the largest apartment buildings in New York City. The massive development consists of several building block segments, vertically stacked and interconnected. The 42-story tall tower on the east and a 17-story tall tower on the west make up the space dedicated to 1,028 residential units.

To provide resident access between the two towers at every floor, a seven-foot wide, 14-inch thick concrete slab pedestrian corridor bridge was installed at each tower. Two towers make up the eastern tower, and the corridor bridges are fixed to one tower but rest on sliding bearing pads on the other tower. This allows the two eastern towers to sway independently of one another from the 3rd floor to the 28th floor.

Voss Engineering was challenged by this job to provide slide bearings for the pedestrian interconnects on the project.  Initially the engineer of record was looking to use an elastomeric steel reinforced shim pad to provide for the longitudinal movement and vertical load transfer.  In order to accommodate the required longitudinal movement the elastomeric steel reinforced shim pad would have been extremely tall.  In a project such as this, it is critical to keep the floor to floor height as vertically compact as possible.

As a SORBTEX® Expansion Bearing de-couples the requirements of vertical load transfer and longitudinal movement, Voss Engineering was able to offer a bearing assembly that met the performance requirements in a package that resulted in a significantly lower height requirement for the bearing.  There were two different elements in the pedestrian interconnects - on the east bridge, one side was pinned and the other was a slide bearing.  On the west pedestrian bridge, both sides were supported with Voss' Slide bearing assemblies. 

Additional Reading:
606 West 57th Street, New York: Design of Structurally-linked Multiple Tower Structures via STRUCTURE Magazine