Buffalo Bones : Assessing the Existing Market Building

Market buildings take on many different shapes and forms: the historic Greek agora was distinguished by its columns and colonnades, whereas the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul is maze-like in appearance. Perhaps more familiar is the image of a single-story municipal building with a central vaulted atrium (as seen below in an early iteration of the Broadway Market circa 1890). Regardless of form, markets are ultimately shaped by public use and representative of the people they serve.

1904 Courier Express

The existing building that houses the Broadway Market was built in 1956, designed by the firm James Meadows and Howard (successor to Green & Wicks). This building was inspired in part by the mid-century modern streamlined aesthetic (known as art moderne) with rounded corners and smooth concrete façade. Originally, the building was designed to have only one story: the second level of parking was added in 1955 after construction was already underway.

Composed of concrete and masonry, the building footprint occupies the entire 4-acre site, with over 90,000SF of space dedicated to the market alone. Most of the building is slab-on-grade, with a distinctive coffered waffle ceiling overhead supported by precast joists. This style of construction allows for thinner, lighter and more economical floor slabs since they use less material. Overall, this building technology relies on repetition, replicability, and precision.

1957 AIA New York State, March 04

Throughout the building there are also hundreds of structural columns of various diameters and heights, most of which terminate in a mushroom-shaped column cap. As the second level was added after the first was already under construction, the second-floor columns had to be spliced into the existing, meaning the slab had to be cut open to tie the second-floor level columns into the existing columns on level one.

Continual need for repair and maintenance of the parking structure—both the deck and columns—has been an ongoing challenge since the early 1970’s. All building repairs are costly at the Broadway Market simply due to the sheer size and volume of material.

A 1983 renovation (by Canon Design) was the most substantial change to the market to date. This renovation involved removing segments of the second-floor plate to allow for relocation of the building’s escalators and adding skylights which bring much-needed natural daylight into the cavernous structure.

Stacked Mushroom Columns in the Market Atrium, which was added in 1983

At this time much of the exterior brick along Broadway was also covered an exterior system for insulation, commonly referred to as drivet.  Like most buildings of the era, insulation of walls or glazing units was not common practice, and insulation was added as a retrofit solution to the exterior. While the drivet material helps insulate the building, it is susceptible to damage and requires frequent repairs.

Additional challenges facing the current design team are drainage from the second and third floor decks, waterproofing, and thermal controls. As with all buildings in Buffalo, time and the elements have had an impact on the longevity of the structure. Concrete requires continual repair in areas that are exposed to the elements year-round. Exacerbated by de-icing salts and the freeze-thaw cycles of WNY’s climate, the Market’s concrete structure has suffered from spalling, cracking, and rusting of exposed rebar. With over 500,000 SF of building to maintain, the concrete has seen better days and the integrity of the columns and slab are being examined in-depth by our structural engineers.

Mushroom Columns at the rear Ground Floor Parking

The first step in assessing the building’s conditions included site visits and documentation review by architecture and engineering teams. In addition to an updated site survey, a full-building scan was performed using LIDARR (light detection and ranging) technology, which allowed the team to gain access to various areas of the building that had been shuttered for years. To evaluate the concrete structure, engineers also created a thermal model of the building to evaluate stresses caused by temperature fluctuations. Additionally, twenty-four concrete cores samples were sent to a testing laboratory to evaluate the composition and strength of the concrete in the columns and slab.

Typical Market Column with test locations marked

Column Core Being Extracted

Column concrete test core being drilled

Column Core Sample

Photomicrograph (photo of a microscopic object) of concrete core sample

Photomicrograph showing distribution of air voids (pink) in concrete sample

Photomicrograph showing paste fill (x) and metallic iron (circle) in sample

Interior full-building scan

Imagery from a full-building scan

Other building assessments included scoping the 70-year-old plumbing lines, and an upcoming Geotechnical exploration that will evaluate the soil composition and implications on the underlying structure and how that will impact the upcoming renovations to this 70-year old structure.

Together, these steps will provide valuable information about the building and allow architects and engineers to make informed decisions about future repairs and improvements.