I took a tour of the STS Tower/Original Sanger Brothers Building and the Sinclair Building today. Here are a few of my photographs. The first is a picture of the interior of the CVS Pharmacy taken from the entrance into the elevator lobby. This is looking toward the new main entrance to the store, which was the original entrance to the Sanger Brothers Department Store.
Here's a view of Picchi Pacchi's old space inside the Sinclair Building. To the far right an opening has been punched through to the basement which will be a new stair down that is in the original location of the stair into the basement. Immediately to my right is part of the last stairway into the basement. It will be filled in with a new slab and the bar area to the hotel will be located there.
This photo was taken inside the old tobacco shop. A new stairwell is connecting from the existing upper floor stairway into an exit.
Above the 13th floor of the building, the facade starts to step back. This is a view of the original concrete framing for the first setback. One room will fit between the corridor and the outside wall and between the two transfer beams. This is a photo of one of the transfer beams. It will be covered by the walls between the two hotel rooms.
When you get off of the elevator on the 15th floor, you are greeted with this lobby. It has a large window facing north into the light well and a stairway leading up to the 16th floor penthouse. All of the core elevators originally stopped at this level. A private elevator was located behind the stairway that led up to the 16th floor. The renovations of the hotel will take one of the core elevators up to the 16th floor to serve those rooms and to the roof. The old elevator opening is being enlarged to extend the existing fire stair upward to the 16th floor and to the roof. The new glass stairway also connects all of the levels as the 2nd exit. This 15th floor lobby will be part of a 2 level penthouse suite that uses the existing stair in the photo.
Here's a view of the 16th floor from near the existing stairway. The wood framing in the ceiling is the new stair opening up to the roof. Everything in the foreground between the stairway to the roof and me is the upper floor of the penthouse unit.
Here's a view from the 16th floor looking down into the light well where the fire escape was once located. The new glass enclosed stair will go here and you can see the large window on the 15th floor lobby.
Want to see the existing roof where the new rooftop terrace will go? We had to climb the existing roof access ladder. Currently that is the only way to get up there. In the early days of this website, I had a chance to tour the building and go on the roof. That was in the early 2000's. You will see a lot of debris up there. The reason is that the cooling tower and the penthouse for the overrun for the private elevator were removed. The new stairwells and the elevator extension will be the new projections up on the roof, along with the rooftop terrace structure. Before my tour started, I was given a virtual reality tour of the 2 story penthouse suite and the rooftop terrace.
I'm sure you are probably wondering what the views look like from the top. I took several but I decided to post two photos. The first is of Sundance Square.
Finally, here is probably the best shot that I took from the roof. Here's the new Frost Tower.
I was hoping to post these over to social media, but I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow evening.