Renewing Chelsea Sq. ~ Desmond Tutu Education Center ~ Fact Sheet: Desmond Tutu Education Center

Fact Sheet: Desmond Tutu Education Center

Project: Creation of a new facility of The General Theological Seminary, to provide space for two existing learning centers, two new learning centers, a conference center, and 59 guest rooms. The project is being realized through renovation and adaptive reuse if three historic buildings.

Location: Tenth Avenue, between 20th and 21st Streets
The Tutu Center occupies the west side of the Seminary’s landmarked Chelsea Square campus.

Learning Centers: Serving clergy and laity alike, the Tutu Center will host programs of

Conference Center: The education complex will also be made available to other not-for-profit organizations, offering them conference facilities of a quality that cannot be found elsewhere in Manhattan. These include two large, fully wired meeting rooms (accommodating 70 and 100 persons), 5 smaller break-out rooms, 59 guest rooms with modern amenities, and the Seminary’s Hoffman Hall refectory: a vaulted, oak-wainscotted dining room that has been called "one of New York’s most beautiful interior spaces."

Size: 60,000 square feet

Project Cost: $23 million

Architect:
Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners LLP
Frederick Bland, FAIA, AICP, Partner in Charge
Elizabeth R. Leber, AIA, Associate Partner, Project Manager
Yetsuh Frank, RA, LEED, Project Architect

Landscape Architect:
Quennell Rothschild & Partners
Andrew Moore, Partner

the present buildings on 10th Avenue

the new entrance

Principal Design Features: The Tutu Center project creates the Seminary’s first entrance on its west side, opening the campus and its grounds (the Close) as never before while creating a new green space on busy Tenth Avenue. The design removes most of a blank wall that has long stood on the Tenth Avenue side and replaces it with a beautiful, historic wrought iron fence, inset with a welcoming gateway. The brownstone coping of the fence harmonizes with the 19th century character of the existing buildings, while the gateway (made of steel) provides a gracious entry that is clearly modern. Visitors proceed into a new garden, some 100 feet long and 40 feet deep at its maximum, and proceed along a path to the entrance of the Tutu Center: a contemporary steel and glass element inserted sensitively into the masonry fabric of one of the existing buildings. This entrance opens onto a new double-height lobby, designed in a clean, modern style. On its other side is a matching entrance, which permits views from Tenth Avenue through to the Close.

Interior design work includes a gut renovation of existing spaces to create 59 fully modern guest rooms. All historic plaster moldings, trim and mantel pieces are being retained and restored. The gymnasium of Hoffman Hall is being renovated to provide two major conference rooms, and other spaces within that building are being redesigned and rebuilt as smaller break-out conference rooms and a modernized kitchen.

Exteriors of the historic buildings are being restored, with new slate roofs laid down, new copper gutters and flashing installed and outdated fire escapes removed.

A combination of new construction and renovation will make the Tutu Center fully accessible.

Construction Manager:
Bovis Lend Lease
Paul Ashlin, Senior Vice President
Robert Worsham III, Vice President, Project Executive

Infrastructure Engineers:
Edwards & Zuck, P.C. Consulting Engineers
Michael Gervasi, P.E., Principal

Roof and Envelope Enginers:
Walter B. Melvin Architects, LLC
Charles DiSanto, Principal
Kevin Daly, Project Manager