The Hidden Curtains That Reopened the Beekman’s Atrium

Look up inside the Beekman Hotel in Lower Manhattan and the building seems to unfold overhead. Ornamental galleries climb toward a pyramidal skylight, turning an ordinary glance upward into the main architectural event. Yet the equipment that made this view possible is deliberately difficult to see.

For decades, walls concealed the atrium because of fire-safety concerns. Reopening it required more than removing partitions and restoring ironwork. The renovation team had to give an enormous, interconnected space a way to control smoke. Their solution included curtains that remain tucked away until needed, together with glass corner baffles and a coordinated ventilation system.

The result is a striking example of preservation through engineering: modern equipment allows an old building’s defining feature to remain visible. New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission explicitly credited the new fire-safety system with enabling the historic atrium’s return. NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Where it is

The Beekman, formerly the Temple Court Building

5 Beekman Street, Lower Manhattan, New York City

An office building organized around daylight

Temple Court opened in 1883, decades before glass skyscrapers became the familiar image of a Manhattan office. Its architects, Silliman & Farnsworth, organized 212 offices around an interior court. Those offices opened toward both the building’s exterior and the atrium, making the central void part of the working floor plan rather than simply a decorative entrance. Temple Court landmark designation report

That arrangement addressed a practical problem. A tall building could stack more rentable rooms on a site, but its occupants still needed light and ventilation. An interior court brought another illuminated face into the building. Instead of placing every desirable office along the outside walls, the design created an inward-facing frontage as well.

There was a commercial audience for this architectural ambition. Temple Court was commissioned to accommodate law practices, and its elaborate central space helped distinguish an office address in a growing downtown business district. The building combined the efficient repetition of offices with a shared interior that made arriving at work feel consequential. Building Design + Construction

The surviving decoration makes that ambition tangible. Cast-iron balustrades edge the galleries, ornamental brackets include dragon forms, and patterned tile floors give the circulation routes their own visual richness. Seen from below, repeated railings and openings turn nine stories into one composition. The city’s architectural description records these details as integral elements of the atrium. LPC atrium designation brief

When openness became a liability

The same continuous volume that distributed daylight also connected floors that would otherwise be separated. Heated smoke rises, and an open central court offers a route upward. Controlling that movement becomes essential when occupied corridors overlook the space.

Temple Court’s response was to enclose the atrium. Architectural Record places the enclosure in the late 1940s, while acknowledging uncertainty about the precise code changes behind it. The court remained hidden for more than 60 years, so thoroughly screened that many tenants reportedly did not know it existed. Architectural Record

Closing the openings changed how the building could be experienced. A tenant could occupy an office beside an extraordinary interior without sharing its view. The architecture survived, but its central organizing idea disappeared from everyday use.

That distinction matters to the restoration story. Preserving a building’s walls and decorative fabric does not automatically preserve its spatial experience. Here, recovering the original sense of height meant confronting the reason it had been concealed in the first place.

A boundary that appears when needed

The hotel conversion began in 2013, and the Beekman opened in September 2016. Architect Gerner Kronick + Valcarcel worked within a project that paired the historic property with a new adjoining tower. Reopening the court required coordination with the fire department and preservation authorities. LPC, Building Design + Construction

Around the atrium, automatically deployed glass-fiber smoke curtains provide a boundary that is absent from the everyday view. The renovation also incorporated extensive sprinklers and protective coatings on the ironwork. These measures work as parts of a larger design, with different components addressing different aspects of a fire. Architectural Record

Detectors activate the curtains, which descend around the atrium perimeter. Their role is to restrict smoke movement between the central volume and the surrounding galleries. Exhaust provisions near the historic skylight give rising smoke a controlled route out. Period Homes

The air supply matters too. Project reporting describes roof fans and a smoke-purge system that brings replacement air through ground-floor windows and doors. Extracting smoke therefore involves the building from bottom to top, rather than relying on an opening in the roof alone. Building Design + Construction

The difficult details are at the edges

Installing a curtain across a straight opening is only part of the challenge. The Beekman’s perimeter turns corners, and its historic decoration limits where equipment can fit.

Supplier BLE describes compact housings made with varying dimensions along individual runs so they could avoid historic metal medallions. The project also used vertically oriented, fire-rated glass baffles at the corners. Those transparent elements address the junctions between curtain runs while preserving views across the court. BLE project account

These are small interventions relative to the height of the atrium, but they explain why the restoration feels convincing. A bulky enclosure could have overwhelmed the gallery edges. Carefully fitted housings and transparent corner pieces allow the historic metalwork to remain visually dominant.

On June 4, 2024, the city designated the atrium an interior landmark, extending protection to the space itself. Its renewed visibility now has formal recognition alongside its architectural appeal. NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Looking upward, visitors see the exuberance of an early office tower. Along its edges sits the quieter achievement: equipment designed to let that exuberance remain open to view.

Sources

• NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission: Atrium designation, June 4, 2024
• NYC LPC: Temple Court Building and Annex designation report
• NYC LPC: Atrium designation brief
• Architectural Record: The Beekman Hotel in New York City
• Building Design + Construction: 5 Beekman Hotel and Residences
• Period Homes: The Beekman, a Thompson Hotel
• BLE Smoke & Fire: Beekman Hotel project