Dream Downtown Hotel (New York City, New York)

355 West 16th Street
New York, NY 10011
(212) 229-2559
www.dreamdowntown.com/

11-story hotel originally completed in 1966. Designed by Albert Ledner, who also designed the building next door for the National Maritime Union, it was built as an annex for the organization's headquarters building. Both buildings were later converted to the Covenant House runaway shelter from 1987 until 1994, when they were sold to the Chinese government and used as a service center for Chinese Study Fellows.

In 2011, this building was gutted and redesigned with a new facade by Frank Fusaro of Handel Architects. Opened as the Dream Downtown Hotel, it has 316 rooms behind its cheese grater facade. The sloping face on 17th Street is clad in stainless steel tiles. New porthole windows were added, some of the same dimension as the original and some half the size, loosening the rigid grid of the previous design. The tiles reflect the sky, sun, and moon, and when the light hits the façade perfectly, the stainless steel disintegrates and the circular windows appear to float like bubbles.

The 16th Street side of the building, previously a blank façade when the building served as an annex, is covered with a scrim of perforated stainless steel punched with large holes. All regularly spaced, as opposed to the more random pattern on the north facade, the holes here enclose balconies fronted by nearly invisible glass balustrades. The outer screen peels up at the ground level to form the hotel canopy and reveal the hotel entrance. The pool, suspended over the Marble Lane restaurant, has a transparent acrylic bottom.

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