Alcon Builders Group has created an award-winning, one-of-a-kind luxury townhouse in Tribeca that combines a complete interior redesign of a landmark status two-story 1915 brick building with new construction of an adjacent six-story, steel-framed, fiber and cement tower. Patrick Boland, the president of Alcon, construction manager for the project, said, "This perfect marriage of old and new is living proof that a building can feature every Smart, state-of-the-art aspect of today's technology without sacrificing character, style or warmth." The single-family mansion-like property which sold last year for the highest figure ever obtained for a residence south of Houston St., is 65' wide, comprises over 11,000 interior and 1,500 exterior s/f between the two buildings and includes five bedrooms, seven full baths, four powder rooms, three fireplaces, a staff apartment, an artist's studio, a grand library, a screening and billiards room, and a private outdoor dining atrium. Boland said, "We encountered enormous challenges daily, but finding a resolution for each raised the end product to a higher level each time." To maximize the use of natural light, Alcon vice president of operations John Dwyer put the CM's prime glazier to the task. The team constructed the new tower's façade of a glass curtain wall composed of ultraviolet, heat-resistant, laminated, high-efficient, low-e glass and made ample use of glass interspersed with fiber and cement for the sides. For the renovated two-story structure, double pane thermal windows were custom-cut to fit the space of the original arches. A pair of oversized skylights fitted with steel grids flood the original building with light. Alcon's expertise in working with a variety of materials with exacting precision and, at times, in novel ways was key to the project's success. Project manager William Conklin said, "Structural steel is the framework for the tower on the exterior and is also used extensively in the interior." A pair of walnut-clad, structural steel staircases runs through both buildings, tying together the interior elements and making a compelling design statement. The uniquely configured handrail, a bold work of art, was custom fabricated and installed by Alcon's millworker and designed by Wayne Turett of Turett Collaborative Architects, the project's architect. Steel fashioned what some call the home's piece de resistance - a stainless steel, 50 foot long saltwater lap pool on the tower's top floor, reputedly the largest such pool in Manhattan. Many other challenges were encountered and met. To create a fully digitized, Smart home run on an elaborate Crestron keypad system that the owners can access from any remote location, Alcon installed an intricate labyrinth of mile-long cables with painstaking accuracy to ensure precise operation of everything from appliances to a complex security system to lights that can be dimmed at 1 to 100% intervals. "Clearly the project has avant garde status in its own right," said Boland.