Scope of Work
A second piece of our work at the main branch of the Newark Public Library on Washington Street: the entrance to the New Jersey Hispanic Research Information Center, opened up from the corridor with a full-height glazed wall and a pair of automatic swing doors. The opening sits inside an original plaster surround with a deep cornice, so the storefront was built to fill the surround exactly: a sidelite on the left, the paired doors on the right, and a transom across the top that carries the glass up to the cornice. We fabricated and installed the framing, the doors and the operators; the glass office partitions for the research and archive rooms were the first phase.
Narrow-Stile Doors
The doors are narrow-stile aluminum: the vertical frame members at the edge of each door are the slimmest of the three standard stile widths, so the leaf is almost all glass. In a library that matters twice. The room beyond is meant to be seen from the corridor, with its signage and its reading tables in view, and the narrow stile keeps the doors from reading as a barrier. And the paired leaves meet at a thin center line without a mullion, so when both open the full width is clear. Offset pulls on the inside and a bottom rail sized for the closer and the operator arm are the only hardware you see. Our guide to storefront door design: stiles, pulls and closers explains the choice.
Automatic Operation
Both leaves are driven by low-energy swing-door operators mounted in the header, with the sensor above the doors on the corridor side. Visitors with a book cart, a stroller, a wheelchair or an armful of files walk up and the doors open toward them and close behind; the operators are set to the slow, low-force opening that an accessible entrance in a public building calls for, and the doors can still be pushed open by hand if the power is off. The header that carries the operators is a storefront horizontal, sized for the motor housing and reinforced at the pivots, with the transom glass above it.
Built Into the Original Surround
The library is an old building, and the opening is an old doorway with its plaster casing and cornice intact. The storefront was measured to the inside of the casing, built as one framed unit, and set plumb inside it with the perimeter sealed to the plaster, so the new aluminum reads as a clean inset in the old moulding rather than a replacement of it. Clear anodized framing was chosen to match the partitions elsewhere on the floor; the glass is tempered throughout, with the transom and sidelite glazed from the same framing. The photograph was taken during the renovation, before the floor and the corridor were finished.
Photographs
Photographed from the corridor after installation, during the library's renovation.
Similar Work and Related Specifications
Commercial doors · Storefront doors · Storefront door design: stiles, pulls, closers · Partition systems · Building entrance doors · Newark Public Library: glass office partitions · Pomona NY: office dividers and aluminum doors
Planning Something Similar?
Need an accessible automatic entrance or a glazed interior storefront in a library, school, office or public building? Send a photo of the opening and its size. We will propose the framing, the door stile, the operators and the glass, and quote it supplied or installed.