SCOTT DEMEL
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BUILDING 77 AT THE BROOKLYN NAVY YARD

Entrance Plaza
Entrance plaza facing Flushing Avenue.  Brick pavers mark the location of the former rifle range and Building 93, the sister to Building 92 which created the historic military parade ground and campus entry.

Flushing Avenue
Building 77 seen from Flushing and Vanderbilt Avenue.

Entrance Lobby Desk
Entrance desk to the upper floors along the gantry corridor.

Event at the Gantry Hall
Events held at the main space.

Reopened in 2017, Building 77 is a modern production center and new entrance into the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The building was rapidly constructed in 1942 as a sixteen story reinforced concrete structure with 1 million square feet of floor space.  The windowless lower 11 floors provided warehouse storage while the upper floors served as offices for the Yard’s Commandant and the US Navy’s oversight of the North Atlantic Fleet during WWII.  The building is a part of the National Register Brooklyn Navy Yard Historic District.

For the building's conversion, a new south entrance is placed at the terminus of Vanderbilt Avenue and the original 1801 fence line is folded back to the face of the building, creating an urban open space connecting to the neighborhood and inviting the public inside.  A long, through-building corridor is established by following a historic gantry, originally used to load railroad cars.  New openings at the ground floor of the facade create an exterior loggia facing the street and overlook into the Navy Yard, allows daylight to enter the interior spaces and provides visual connectivity into and out of the building.

The gantry corridor divides the 64,000sf ground floor into 1/3 and 2/3-sized allocations with large food production tenants on one side and midsize producers on the other.  Production tenants can access both the gantry corridor for retail food counters and 260' docks along both sides of the building.  The corridor provides a mix the employees and visitors of businesses at the Navy Yard, vocational students, and general public with access to food retail, building elevator lobby and campus entrance.

The south historic entrance and canopy of Building 77 is designated as an entrance to the STEAM Education Center (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math).

Scott Demel acted as director for the Building 77 project at Marvel Architects, overseeing all aspects of the project's development from initial concept to construction completion.





Interior
                            Gantry Corridor
The gantry corridor with food production spaces accessed through two-story glass walls.  A stair and mezzanine leads to an overlook for meetings and small events.

Overlook of the Navy Yard
North seating area and operable glass wall, overlooking the Brooklyn Navy Yard.


Photography by Daniel ByrneHistoric Event photo by the Brooklyn Navy Yard.



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