3D Scanning of 250 Delaware Avenue Preps Project

In collaboration with Foit Albert Associates and Uniland Development Company, Boston Valley Terra Cotta began survey and scanning the to-be-reconstructed 250 Delaware Avenue building. The project at the site of the current Delaware Court building includes replication of the ground floor terra cotta facade, as well as a four-story, 120-room hotel occupying the second through fifth floors, and Class A office space from the sixth through 12th floors. In all, the hotel will take up 92,900 square feet, while the office space will occupy 190,894 square feet.

The New 250 Delaware (Image courtesy of Uniland Development)

Originally built in 1917 and designed by Lansing, Bley &Lyman Architects, the Delaware Court building features an iconic curved facade on the corner of Delaware Avenue and W. Chippewa Street in downtown Buffalo, NY. Because of the additional 12 stories that are to be added to complete the proposed design, Uniland Development in association with project architect Diamond Schmitt Architects and HHL Architects decided to demolish the existing building and replicating the terra cotta facade. The the iconic look of the building will be restored while allowing for new construction and new use of the site to take place.

1900s photo of the original Delaware Court Building

To begin the process of scanning the building, Foit Albert Associates utilized ‘Faro Focus 3D’ at a rate of 1 million points per second. The scanned file received by the ARCH Design Lab at Boston Valley was then converted from an Autodesk Recap file into a Rhinoceros 3D file. Our team will now begin editing and manipulating this Rhinoceros 3D file to start recreating the historic facade.

The converted scan data from Foit Albert in 3D software