Circular Logic Sure, They're Fun, but Revolving Doors Also Have a Higher Purpose
7-27-02 | MARCOS MOCINE-McQUEEN
New Yorkers move fast. They like their subways flying, their taxis racing and their doors spinning.
It makes sense, then, that New York is considered the revolving door capital of the world.
"New York, especially Manhattan, is definitely the biggest revolving door market," said Scott Wedgbury, executive director of the International Revolving Door Association. "Other cities like Singapore and Hong Kong are just now starting to pick up on them."
The revolving door's ubiquity in New York City comes, in part, from the city's insatiable appetite for skyscrapers.
The doors are a scientific effort to equalize air pressure. Revolvers, as they are known in the industry, prevent the city's skyscrapers from turning into high-rise wind tunnels. When cold weather sets in, for example, and a skyscraper's heaters are turned on, hot air rises to the top of the building, leaving a vacuum on the lower floors. If a regular swinging door, or swinger, is opened, cold air is sucked in to fill that void, creating winds that muss hairstyles and blow papers around lobbies.
During the summer, cold air-conditioned air sinks to the bottom of the building and rushes out when swinging doors open.
Because some segment of a revolving door is always closed, it prevents air from being sucked into or pushed out of the building and keeps energy costs down.
"We always like to say, 'Revolvers are always open, always closed,' " said Donald Haerer of Horton Automatics, one of the country's largest revolving door manufacturers. "If it's real cold, the suction can be so strong that a small person can't even push open a swinger."
The prominence of the revolving door is not simply a matter of speed and efficiency, it is also a matter of style. New York's doors are among the most ornate.
"Architects carefully choreograph a building's entrance," said Andrew S. Dolkart, an architectural historian at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. "Every element is designed to create a sense of vastness."
Mr. Dolkart points to the Chrysler Building. When people first walk up to the building they are greeted by a three-story arch that seems to promise a towering lobby inside. Then they walk through a set of shiny silver-and-glass revolving doors to find a much shorter lobby than they expected.
"When you walk from the small space in the revolving door and step into the lobby the space just seems to explode," Mr. Dolkart said. "The lobby feels so big compared to the small space in the door that you don't even notice that the lobby isn't as big as you thought it would be. That small space in the door is critical to creating the illusion."
And first impressions are important for buildings, too. "Your lobby is a statement," said Alan Risi, president of Georal International, a company that sells and installs doors. "If you're trying to rent your space to a lawyer for more than a million bucks, you want them to see nice, attractive brass revolving doors when they walk into the lobby."
Though the doors are popular in New York, they did not originate here. The design of the modern revolving door differs little from the original one patented by Theophilus Van Kannel in Philadelphia in 1888. In his patent he promised his new door was "perfectly noiseless in its operation and effectually prevents the entrance of wind, snow, rain or dust."
"Further than this, as the door moves in but one direction, there is no possibility of collision."
Vintage revolvers are easily found in New York. The doors of the Manhattan State Supreme Court building recall a time when the materials of choice were wood and brass, not brushed stainless steel. The doors date back 80 years by the estimation of Robert Balay, who repairs doors for Georal International and does most of his work in New York City.
Older doors can be hard to take apart, Mr. Balay explained, because each manufacturer had unique structural elements, there are no instruction manuals left and many of the companies have gone out of business, making it tough to find parts.
Mr. Balay also has to make sure the doors meet the city's strict codes on speed limits: they must be unable to go faster than 15 rotations a minute (although department officials admit that building inspectors are not spending much time clocking door speeds).
Mr. Dolkart, the architectural historian, said that the revolving door was a perfect fit for the city because it allows people to enter and exit a building at the same time. "Architecture usually reflects the social climate of a place," Mr. Dolkart said. "New York is a city where people are always coming and going."
Though revolvers have seen the occasional dark moment (in "The Godfather," a mobster is trapped and murdered in a revolving door) they are a source of fun for some tourists. At the N.B.A. store on Fifth Avenue, Gilly Ashdown, 11, took the revolving door through its paces with other children from her hometown, San Francisco: her sister, Madi Ashdown, 13; Alex Cox, 11; and Alex's sister, Francesca Cox, 9. They pushed the doors round and round, sometimes squeezing two or more people into one space. They gave the door's artistic elements a good review: the bars are life-size bronze castings of a basketball player's outstretched arm clutching a basketball.
"Sometimes the guards get mad at you if you ride them around and around but it's fun anyway," Gilly said. "These doors are just better than regular swinging ones. We don't have as many in San Francisco."
Gilly may not care, but experts say that proper door spinning involves technique and practice. Philippe Fils-Aim, the doorman at the Museum Towers on 53rd Street, has spun its revolving door for 14 years.
"You have to be watching the people very carefully," Mr. Fils-Aim said, as he stood on the sidewalk ready to push the door for residents entering or exiting the building. "If you push it too fast, you hit their feet. If you push it too slow, they'll walk into the glass. You have to have a touch."
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Saturday, 12 March 2005 01:36 (twenty-one years ago)