A Four-Story Expansion Bringing New Tang Wing to New York’s First Museum
The New York Historical was established in 1804 as New York’s first museum. The Tang Wing for American Democracy, a four-story expansion, added new galleries, education-dedicated spaces, collections study areas, conservation space, and classrooms that enable expanded on-site programming for New York City public school students. It also includes a state-of-the-art new storage facility for the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library. Still under construction will be an entire floor dedicated to the new American LGBTQ+ Museum, the first museum in New York City dedicated to LGBTQ+ history and culture.
Altieri provided comprehensive mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection (MEPF) engineering design services for the expansion of The New York Historical. The project included the design of new cooling towers, chiller plants, air handling units, and a heat rejection plant to serve both the new annex and the existing museum, while a dedicated heating system was designed specifically for the expansion. Because the central MEPF infrastructure was located within the existing building, chilled water and other utility systems were carefully reconfigured and extended to serve the new Wing while maintaining uninterrupted operation of the museum. The design incorporated dedicated environmental control systems tailored to the unique performance requirements of the conservation laboratory, collections storage, and gallery spaces, ensuring precise temperature and humidity control for the preservation of artifacts. Supporting the project’s LEED goals, the building systems feature energy recovery ventilation to reduce outdoor air conditioning loads, heat recovery from the chiller plant, a waterside economizer within the chilled water system, and variable-flow pumping to optimize energy use by matching system output to building demand.
