Superior Scaffold and Armor Masonry take on the largest supported scaffold job in the history of Philadelphia!!!
The Historic Bellevue Hotel.
This record-setting Scaffold is 271 feet high, and two city blocks long – 404 feet! And that’s not even counting the 3rd side. There were lots of obstacles that had to be overcome with this one. Read on for the details.
The owners of The Bellevue are renovating this historic 19 story building, constructed in 1904, into a new powerhouse mixed use structure with 155 residences, offices, hotel rooms, glorious event rooms and more. And as part of the massive revitalization project – Armor Masonry was awarded the exterior renovation contract to bring this beauty to her former glory, not just little by little, but all at once! Thus, the massive scaffold around two sides of the building at one time.
So how do you scaffold something like this when you can’t hang swings (suspended scaffolding) from the roof or erect scaffolding on cantilevered platforms? Well, thank goodness. we’ve been here before. Not once, but twice, doing repairs both ways. So, we had an edge and knew just how to get the job done.
In 2008, we were called in to provide access to repair the balconies and upper portion of the building. And if you look at this photo of the upper section, there was no way to use suspended scaffold from the roof. So, our resident king of swing, Bob Sarkisian, devised a way to cantilever out the windows, support the platform with shoring posts and then erect a 6-story scaffold on the platform to reach the top and do repairs around the balconies and other portions. This allowed crews to work out and above the cornice but no further down.
The second time Superior Scaffold was called out to do repairs it was for the section below the cornices. Having learned how to work around this delicate building, Bob used the similar cantilever structure out of the windows of the rooms to support swings to do inspections, light repairs and patching.
This brings us to the Armor Masonry repair work and the request to get renovation crews to every inch of the facade on The Bellevue. Not just a patch or repair here or there but a total exterior renovation! An ambitious project, to say the least. But Armor Masonry was dedicated to repairing it right, every square inch this time.
So, Armor came to Superior, not only being a regular client, but also knowing our history on this building. If anyone was going to be able to design a scaffold to do the job it would Bob Sarkisian and Superior. As we stated above, it’s just impossible to swing the entire building. The ornate roof structures just won’t allow it.
And we couldn’t use the cantilever method out of the rooms because it would have required the hotel to shut off an entire floor of rooms just to house aluminum beams and shoring scaffold to hold both the rigging and scaffold needed to do repairs. So, what were we going to do?
Well, why not erect the largest supported scaffold Philly has ever seen? That would allow crews to get to every inch of the Bellevue from the ground to the top. And if possible, we could do one or two sides at time and while work moved down from the top, we could be erecting another side.
First step was to get engineers down there to make sure the sidewalks could support the weight of the giant scaffold.
They did their magic calculations and determined that if we shored up the sidewalk beneath, we in fact, could erect this mammoth scaffold. So, designs were drawn up and agreed upon and then we commenced to building.
Because time was an issue, we also installed a transport platform to haul workers and material up and down because climbing up and down 38 floors of scaffold stairs is exhausting. And once the scaffold got crews up close and personal, they realized that exterior was worse than the surveys indicated, and it would take a bit more work than originally estimated.
That brings up another interesting fact on this job. You can see that we only have 8 levels decked in near the top. The super-smart engineer people have calculated that the weight of the scaffold plus the planks we use to deck it in could only support 8 decked levels at a time, allowing weight for workers and equipment. I am not smart enough to figure that out – they can do it. But if we were to deck in too many levels, the scaffold could collapse under its own weight.
So, what the crew had to do, was as they finished on one level, they move the deck down and begin work on the next section below. Playing a giant game of leapfrog, if you will, to ensure that the scaffold always stays within its calculated weight limits. And for god’s sake – don’t fill it full of Eagle’s fans. 😉
The Broad Street side, the front entrance, went up first. We decked in the top 8 levels and added debris netting to those decks for pedestrian protection. And as pretty as system scaffold with a dress of netting is, the owners thought it could look a little better.
So, they even took to decorating our scaffold at the front entrance to spice it up for the customers coming to the building.
As the Broad St. side was being worked on, we started installing scaffold on the Walnut side and rocked as fast as we safely could.
Again, we installed a transport platform to help speed up the scaffold erection process. The pictures you see are of the second side, almost to the top.
Once that was completed, the restoration crews moved to the third side and repeated the process that was put into place on the Broad Street side, repairing anything and everything to make this building look and function as good as new again.
Here you can see some of the finished product on the Broad St side and the Walnut St side as the scaffold came down.
Look at the finished product!!!
While we dismantled the Walnut St side we simultaneously leapfrogged the scaffold around the building and repeated the process for the final side on Chancellor Street.
In total, this project will take the better part of a year and half to complete but The Bellevue will look spectacular, ready to host Presidents and dignitaries once again.
You can see what the first two sides look like after the renovation! A great job to everyone who made this project a resounding success!!!
And if you need scaffolding, access or an innovative idea on how to handle a project, call Bob at (215) 743-2200 today or visit www.superiorscaffold.com.
And no blog would be complete without its musical accompaniment. So in honor of this massive project and what was accomplished we have…
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