When students at New York University and their parents lugged suitcases into Rubin Hall at the start of the fall semester last year, they might not have realized that the building had undergone a $7 million renovation to be environmentally sustainable.
N.Y.U. bought the building at Fifth Avenue and 10th Street in 1964 when it was still the Grosvenor Hotel and turned the storied Greenwich Village property into student housing.
Renovating Rubin Hall came about during the “normal course of business” of periodically refreshing other student residence halls. But the university decided to invest in retrofitting the freshman dorm to meet sustainability and passive house standards, including limiting energy usage and costs, and bringing comfortable temperatures to the whole building.
“We commit, in every new project of this scale, to look at a fully electric solution, to look at something that moves toward our climate neutral goal by 2040,” said Cecil Scheib, N.Y.U.’s chief sustainability officer.
The renovation took 15 months and included updates to the building’s common spaces, student rooms, and staff work spaces. Hot water replaced the need for costly fuel-based boiler systems, which Edwin Arnaud, the building engineer, bemoaned as cumbersome. Custom-made windows were designed to maintain the building’s landmark status.
Deciding what needs to be done to retrofit a building in a landmark district involves consultations with a facade specialist or a firm familiar with renovating historic structures, said Michael Syracuse, a partner at FX Collaborative, a Brooklyn-based architectural firm.
“In these retrofits, you’re working with what’s there — doing some site investigation, looking at record documents that exist and then looking at each component,” Mr. Syracuse said. “We like to look at the exterior envelope and how tight can we get that, and what are the opportunities and challenges in creating a really great envelope.”
Some savings are hard to monetize, Mr. Scheib said. The real test, he said, is student satisfaction. A second-floor common area holds a kitchenette, study rooms, a music room, and a dance studio. Student rooms have large windows that keep cold out and heat in, and all dorm rooms now have air-conditioning.
“How do you value students who did better on an exam because they got a good night’s sleep, could focus better, or write a better paper?” Mr. Scheib said. “I don’t know how to put a dollar value on it, but it’s our mission.”
These interviews have been lightly edited for clarity.
Cecil Scheib, chief sustainability officer, New York University
New York City has over five billion square feet of buildings, roughly half residential. One billion square feet of that is prewar, and a significant percentage is over seven stories. That is masonry-clad, steel-frame, high-rise, prewar construction, and steam radiators.
There aren’t a lot of buildings, if any, that are the passive house retrofit this size and all electric. And I don’t want it to be special — I want lots of people to do this. That’s what we all need. If we’re going to have clean air, if we’re going fight climate change, if we’re going to be comfortable and healthy, I want to see other people doing this, too.
Michael Syracuse, partner at FX Collaborative
One of the critical things with these existing buildings is getting in early and understanding the building and what it is, and then designing the new project to take advantage of that. Work with it, not against the existing building. We were fortunate to be able to open up some walls and do some exploration before the construction to understand what this building was.
These renovation projects are all about understanding the existing building and being super strategic. What do you really need to touch, and only peeling back as much as you need to. That has benefits in terms of time, cost and construction, but it also has benefits in terms of not constructing more stuff, more embodied carbon, in this world.
Edwin Arnaud, building engineer
None of the dorm rooms had air-conditioning before. We used to have old drafty windows and we used to have a lot of complaints about cold drafts coming in the building. The radiator used to make a lot of noise at night, and some of the residents couldn’t concentrate when they were on finals.
I have a good team here now — and I love about working here, and supporting the students. I love when I can help them, and it’s easier now to help them
Hayden Hyun, freshman and Rubin’s student government president
A lot of students prefer to go outside and enjoy New York City. But I also do know that Rubin residents here like to use the second-floor lounge. People like to use that space for their studies and hanging out. As president here in Rubin Hall, I love to see how students enjoy it, since this is their first year at college. I want to see them to make new friends. As one of the leaders here, I really wanted students to utilize the new space as much as possible.
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