Respect for History
“The local historic district commission was very concerned about the window configurations and the profile of the windows,” explains Janet Ford, RA, with Hamilton Anderson. “There was still some evidence of the brickmold profile of the upper windows, so when we replaced the missing windows, we were required to match the original profile and were able to do so in aluminum. With historic photos, we were able to match the window-pane configuration for the hung windows. There were no color photos back then, so we didn’t know the color of the windows for certain, but we could tell the color was lighter than the brick so we chose a light window color, similar to the stone color.”
Closer to the ground, the building originally featured storefront windows that had long since been filled in with studs and EIFS. Those windows were restored and the storefronts brought back to life for ground floor retail.
“Another example of speaking to the building’s history is the exterior canopy,” Laux adds. “Ford did an excellent job of working with the original shape and proportion but giving it detail and a more modern twist that speaks to something contemporary. Also, when choosing things like light fixtures, they needed to all be compatible with the building without necessarily fully recreating what was there before.”
The State Historic Preservation Officer was particularly sensitive about any changes to the exterior appearance of the building. That applied not only to structural elements and penetrations, but also to lighting.
“At night, you’ll see accent lighting on the building, and when we first submitted that, it was rejected because they told us they thought it looked too commercial,” Laux says. “We ended up doing mockups of the lighting so they could see the quality of the light. We were out there with extension cords and ladders, holding lights in place at night to show that this was something that was actually compatible with the structure. We submitted those photographs and ultimately had them approved.”
Interior Reclamation
On the inside, much of the building’s historic character was on the first floor in what was once the lobby and main dining room. The upper floors were basically gut rehabs, primarily because they were exposed to the elements for several years. But with the ground floor, the design team had to be very thoughtful and respectful of the building’s original look.
“The dining room originally had a skylight, which had been covered and roofed over,” Ford says. “Prior to the new skylight that was placed in the opening, there was a lot of leakage into that room, so we were slogging through a lot of wet carpet. It was pretty nasty.”
Stud walls had been added to the lobby and dining room at some point to divide the space into offices. These were removed, and the carpet was torn out to expose the terrazzo below. Black and white marble was restored in the lobby, and the plaster and original woodwork was either restored or replaced to revive the interior’s previous appearance.
Upstairs, newly refreshed living units were built around the existing circulation and elevator core. There were some challenges related to the fact that the structure had formerly been built as two completely separate buildings.
“The two buildings were similar, but not exactly the same,” Laux explains. “Typically, in a renovation there is going to be some repetition in structure and some repetition in bay spacing, but because we had two different buildings and they didn’t have the same bay spacing, we needed to design units unique to each condition. Each floor plate has 18 distinct units on it.”
Another curveball thrown to the design team as they melded the two buildings together was the fact that the floor levels didn’t quite line up.
“While it might be perceived as a single floor level, we had sometimes as much as three inches of grade change between the two buildings on any given floor, and it was worse on the upper floors than on the lower floors,” Laux explains. “We had already called for a leveler to even things out, but the way we made it accessible was to use a very low ramp in each corridor to get from the first building to the second. It’s a very shallow ramp and when you walk in the corridors you don’t really feel it, even though there is a grade change.”