655 New York Avenue

Client

Douglas Development Corporation; Brookfield Properties
Location

Washington, DC
Size

1,016,000-SF

Office Buildings

excavation around building that is being rehabbed

Awards

2020 ABC Excellence in Construction Award, Mega Project
2020 ENR Mid-Atlantic Best Project Award of Merit, Office/Retail Mixed-Use Development
2019 ULI Trends Award - Excellence in Office Development
2019 WBC Craftsmanship Award - Sitework, Underpinning, Foundations and Excavations (Star Award)
2020 WBC Craftsmanship Award - Interior Stone & Marble
2020 WBC Craftsmanship Award - Exterior Glass
2021 NAIOP DC Design Awards - Best DC Urban Office: Over 150,000 SF
2018 WBC Craftsmanship Award, Concrete - Cast-in-Place Concrete

Project Brief

Most people see Washington, DC as a modern metropolis – a city bursting with bold new architecture, trophy office buildings, and sleek high-rise condos. However, the city is also filled classic treasures; historic buildings dating back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And as the region’s leading general contractor, it’s our job to preserve the legacy of these historic structures while updating them for their next chapter.

Renowned for our historic restoration expertise, DAVIS has restored and redefined so many of DC’s most prominent older buildings—like Georgetown Car Barn and Uline Arena, to name a few. But our project at 655 New York Avenue has taken historic preservation to a whole new level. Completed in 2019, the mixed-use development encompasses the full city block, blending the old and new Washington by incorporating 19 historic buildings into the new structure. Following the project award, our team’s first milestone was to relocate two of the early 1900s era buildings – a move that is being referred to as a “record-setting feat of engineering.”

Hear More About It

Making way for the new construction meant moving an 800-ton and 1,100-ton building. These were the two heaviest building moves in Washington’s history.

Joe Baker, Project Executive, Davis

Preparing for a Record Breaker

Whenever a historic building is being integrated into new construction, the process becomes more complicated. Now, multiply that process by 19. At 655 New York Avenue, we seamlessly blended new construction with 19 historic buildings – two of which we actually moved from their original locations in order to consolidate the site and create a feasible garage. Wondering how we made the moves? It took time, patience, and the utmost precision. Click through the slides below to see how we did it.

Building Vertically and Horizontally

When both building moves completed, the excavation and concrete structure construction were already well underway. Typically, these processes do not occur simultaneously, but the unique nature of this project necessitates that we build vertically and horizontally at the same time. By utilizing our team’s virtual construction expertise - which includes automated deformation monitoring of the historic structures – we got the job done safely, precisely and on time.

Photos by Rick McCleary

Project Challenges

To ensure each building would remain intact, we employed a strict stabilization process. All flooring was re-secured, and all masonry was repaired and repointed. We then stiffened the structures by adding wood-framed shear walls, steel channels, and steel cabling - essentially making the building into a rigid box.
New permanent foundations were created where the buildings were to be relocated by installing concrete and structural steel caissons which supported a large 30" thick concrete podium slab. From there, temporary move steel was installed at the ground floors. The buildings were then raised up by a hydraulic jack system, lifted off their original foundations, and moved to the new locations on top of a temporary steel roll beam rail system where hydraulic push rams slowly slid the buildings into their final locations. The preparations took over eight months - but the moves themselves only took about a day each.