Manhattan Squash Club — W.R. Grace Building
A wonderfully specific late-1970s New York job: the Bryant Park squash club opened with Diana Nyad playing George Plimpton, then became a major pro venue—all inside the W.R. Grace Building.
The swooping facade of the W.R. Grace Building on West 42nd Street, photographed in 2013.
Current view · 2013 · Photo: WestportWiki · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source
Why this project matters
- Project identity
- Very strong
- Kelly connection
- Family source
- Masonry scope
- Probable
Rita’s list
Transcription: Manhattan Squash Club — 1978
Recorded by Rita Bartscherer · Bartscherer family record
KM-136
2 of two
“Manhattan Squash Club — 1978”
The 22,000-square-foot club had ten singles courts plus doubles, racquetball/handball, restaurant, bar and gym; it operated from 1976 to 1984.
The Manhattan Squash Club squeezed a miniature athletic complex into the curved W.R. Grace Building: ten singles courts, a doubles court, two racquetball/handball courts, restaurant, bar and gym. Its independent 120-ton air conditioner hints at the engineering needed to cool all that activity.
What Kelly did here
Family source
Probable
Likely: selective masonry alteration: likely CMU/block partitions and fire-rated walls, infill or enlargement of openings, patching/rebuilding of existing masonry, and localized brick/stone work rather than the building's original structural frame.
This scope is recorded as probable, not documented. It is a disciplined reading of the building and the trade practice of the period, not a contract-level record of Kelly’s work.
The construction team
The construction team for this job has not yet been established.
What happened to it
Closed
1114 Avenue of the Americas / 42nd Street, New York, NY
Sources
3 citedOpen →
- 01juddtully.net
getting squashed
- 02nysquash.com
summer of 1979
- 03commons.wikimedia.org
File:W. R. Grace Building, New York, NY 10018, USA Jan 2013.jpg
- WestportWiki · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons · 2013
The swooping facade of the W.R. Grace Building on West 42nd Street, photographed in 2013.
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