Charles C. Copeland

Charlie Copeland has helped preserve and maintain some of New York City’s most iconic buildings, among other historic structures, and has developed innovative energy-conservation initiatives. He has overseen the firm’s work on such New York City landmarks as Columbia University, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal, National Museum of the American Indian, New York Botanical Garden, New York University, Carnegie Hall, and the Shubert Theatre portfolio as well as many other Broadway and off-Broadway theaters. He has also engineered historical buildings such as the Fifth Avenue, First, and Central Presbyterian churches, museums such as the Guggenheim, Museum of Jewish Heritage, Center for Jewish History, Morgan Library and Museum, and Rubin Museum, as well as many commercial office buildings in the tristate area. The latter includes the property portfolios of major commercial clients such as Vornado Realty Trust, Empire State Realty Trust, Cushman & Wakefield, the Feil Organization, SL Green and others. Under his leadership, the firm has won numerous awards, including honors from the New York Landmarks Conservancy for its work on both the Empire State Building and Grand Central Terminal.

Among other career highlights, Charlie led a team in 2018 that developed a Geothermal Ground Source Screening Tool for the City of New York. The online tool was developed for the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and the Department of Design and Construction. It enables users to simply assess the feasibility of ground source heating and cooling for every lot in all five boroughs – almost 900,000 lots. A similar screening tool was developed for Westchester County.  In 2006, Charlie engineered the first site-specific materials and equipment acceptance (MEA) for a New York City microturbine installation (at 1350 Avenue of the Americas), which was later used to develop New York City’s standard on microturbines. In 2004, he designed the first New York City office building with the first New York City underfloor air system – the new Scholastic Headquarters at 557 Broadway. The following year, he designed an underfloor air conditioning system using existing pew footrests in the sanctuary at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, thereby preserving the building’s historic interior architecture. In 1999, he oversaw the rehabilitation of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House and designed MEP systems for the installation of the National Museum of the American Indian in that historic structure. In 1988, he managed the engineering for the New York City Energy Conservation Capital Program, the largest municipal energy conservation program of its kind in the United States. That same year, he also began overseeing a 15-year engineering program to upgrade the mechanical/electrical systems in Grand Central Terminal. In 1983, he designed the first series/parallel chilled water system for NYU Medical Center. In 1976, he prepared a major energy study for the Veterans Administration System for Manhattan Hospital, establishing a format that became standard for VA hospitals.

Charlie began addressing energy needs in 1974, designing an early, influential, solar collector thermal installation for a homesteading group resurrecting an abandoned building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Based on the success of the solar panels, the building installed a windmill on the roof. The wind energy system occasionally created an excess of electric power, which led to a dispute with Con Edison, which at that time prohibited any connection to their electrical grid. The dispute rose to New York State’s Public Service Commission, where the homesteaders – represented pro bono by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark – prevailed. The ruling was a crucial forerunner of federal enactment in 1978 of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act, which was key to enabling safe connections to the electrical grid.