Houghton Park Pedestrian Skyway
Corning, N.Y.
Hascup/Lorenzini Associates

Hascup/Lorenzini revives the spirit of the Bauhaus with an enclosed glass bridge and visitors’ pavilion for the Corning Company

© Robert Baker

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By Suzanne Stephens

One doesn’t usually expect a covered bridge to be made of glass. Unless it belongs to Corning Incorporated: Glass has been integral to the architectural identity of this company, located in upstate New York, since Harrison & Abramovitz designed the Corning Glass Center and Administrative Building in 1950–53. Hascup/Lorenzini Associates (now George Hascup Associates and David Lorenzini Associates) designed a pedestrian bridge and a visitors’ pavilion as part of the 5-acre Houghton Park, adjacent to the original complex.

Ironically, however, the glass used in the bridge is not made by Corning. The company once known as Corning Glass Works no longer produces architectural glass, having directed its interests to high-tech areas such as telecommunications components, ophthalmic products, and high-performance glass for television and information display. Only Steuben, renowned for its handblown-glass luxury objects, still has a factory at this location.

The company needed a 200-foot-long bridge to take pedestrians from a 700-car garage and a parking lot for a 1,000 cars across the main boulevard, Poulteney Street, into the Corning campus. Cold, icy weather half the year called for an enclosed bridge. In addition, the company wanted to have a 4,500-square-foot visitors’ pavilion to provide orientation, service facilities, and a shuttle stop for the headquarters. It turned to George Hascup, a professor of architecture at Cornell University, to provide the clean, modern lines displayed in his firm’s Lake Source Cooling Pump Facility for the university (2002).

The 3,600-square-foot elongated structure is composed of an 11-foot-square Vierendeel truss, the largest size that could accommodate pedestrians yet still be trucked from the factory in West Vancouver, Canada. Horizontal mullions of the curtain wall further reinforce the long linear thrust of the bridge, which is cantilevered in true Bauhaus fashion at one end.

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Formal name of Project:
Houghton Park Pedestrian Skyway

Location:
Corning, N.Y.

Gross square footage:
Span: 200 feet

Total construction cost:
$3.5 million (skyway); $2.2 million (visitors’ pavilion)

Owner:
Corning Incorporated

Architect:
Hascup/Lorenzini Associates