The Battery

The project involved the renovation to an historic unreinforced masonry warehouse to transform it into a social club to be known as ‘The Battery’, providing dining, hotel rooms, meeting spaces, and event spaces to its club members. The life safety design and performance based fire engineering provided by Holmes Fire allowed for the dramatic design to provide life safety through alternatives shown to be equivalent or better than code requirements while taking into account the building’s sensitive historic fabric.

A new fourth floor penthouse created an event space. Alternative Solutions were developed for the internal grand stair, to allow its non-fire rated glass enclosure. An assessment confirmed that the existing exposed wood floor system would achieve adequate fire-resistance to support new enclosed exit stairs, without added fire protection. Other alternative solutions were developed to address external boundary wall openings, fire safety provisions for rooftop assembly use space and occupant evacuation from the building. Holmes Fire’s involvement was key to achieving the architectural and functionality objectives of this project.