The lobby of the Dream Downtown hotel on West 17th Street is full of splendors: clouds of hand-blown glass lamps, acres of dark wood end-grain floor, and Alice in Wonderland-style tufted silver poufs. But the greatest splendor of all is a subtle one, a line of four new ibeams introduced into the structure, an iconic mid-century modern building by Albert C. Ledner, to support the new penthouse above.
These columns are dressed, simply and skillfully, in rolled stainless steel casings secured with flush bolts. They have such a subtle presence in the vast, open space that it’s easy to pass without seeing them, but once they catch the eye the rest of the lobby recedes. The enclosures are similar to those Mies Van der Rohe used at the Barcelona Pavilion, shown above. Stretching nearly fifteen feet high, each column at Dream cuts a spectacularly slender figure that dramatizes the strength of the steel inside. Polished to a mirror finish, they very nearly disappear. They’re sublime.
