George Washington Bridge Bus Station. ジョージ・ワシントン・ブリッジ・バスステーション

Awarded in 1958 through Mario Salvadori, Pier Luigi Nervi’s consultancy for the roof of Manhattan’s new bus station—completed in 1963—marked his first major American commission. Collaborating with architect Gordon Lorimer and engineer John Montgomery Kyle of the Port Authority, Nervi refined Lorimer’s preliminary scheme into a distinctive structure defined by its butterfly-wing roof openings. Functionally designed to vent bus exhaust while keeping out rain and snow, the roof expressed Nervi’s signature aesthetic through ribbed concrete forms and variable-section pillars. Initially conceived in ferrocement, the roof was ultimately built in cast-in-place reinforced concrete to reduce costs, while maintaining the expressive depth and rhythm of prefabrication. The project’s technical success, aided by advanced structural calculations at Sapienza University in Rome, solidified Nervi’s reputation in the U.S. and paved the way for further commissions.