Ornate Cornices Disappearing in Washington Heights

The lion’s heads that once graced the cornice of 4195 Broadway, now in a dumpster. (Courtesy Trish Mayo)

When the attention of real estate speculators diverts, sometimes old neighborhoods have time to acquire a majestic patina. The Washington Heights section of northern Manhattan has been neglected for some time, but is now getting a fair share of spillover interest from Columbia’s Manhattanville project and the university’s nearby hospital campus. In 2009, the Audubon Park Historic District was created to protect the area just behind Audubon Terrace, home to the Hispanic Society and the Academy of Arts and Letters. But just north of the district, years of landlord neglect has unwittingly preserved row after row of early 20th century apartment buildings festooned with ornate cornices. But the cornices are now in danger of disappearing.

Most of the decorative cornice at 4181 Broadway (right) was replaced with concrete, and the cornice at 4195 was replaced entirely with corrugated metal.

Provided you look up, there are still vistas in Washington Heights that recall the area’s heyday. In the early part of the last century a striving middle class made up of German Jews, Irish, and Greeks walked beneath striped fabric awnings perched at apartment windows, all topped with fanciful cornices.

More dumpster lions.

Most know that when Robert Moses plowed through the Bronx to build the Cross Bronx Expressway, neighborhoods were severed and died a slow death. But little attention is paid to the Cross Bronx’s connection to the George Washington Bridge, which severed Washington Heights too, providing easy access for suburbanites to swoop in and out of the neighborhood to buy drugs. Eventually, like the South Bronx, the area regained its footing. Now, the Pier Luigi Nervi-designed Port Authority Bus Terminal at the base of the bridge is set to undergo a $285 million restoration. And Starbucks, the ever present harbinger of gentrification, is just a few blocks north.

Planned renovation of the Nervi-designed GW Bridge Bus Terminal. (Courtesy STV Inc.)

But just as Washington Heights begins its reemergence, several building owners are stripping away the architectural features that make the area unique. Just next door to the bus terminal sits 4195 Broadway at the corner of 178th Street. Two weeks ago, the decorative lion heads that once reigned atop the 1920 edifice were stripped, thrown into a dumpster and replaced with corrugated metal. It’s indicative of a neighborhood trend. Over the past several years the cornices of Washington Heights are finally getting much needed maintenance attention. But instead of restoring them, many building owners are ripping them off and replacing them with steel, aluminum, and concrete.

The metal replacement.

Photographer Trish Mayo noticed the latest affront on a bus ride home from the library. The shapes in a dumpster registered as something familiar to her. She got off the bus to investigate. Mayo said the dumpster was almost full with terracotta lion heads taken from 4195. The dumpster has since been carted away. “I think that after so many years of neglect the decorative details have become a safety hazarded and it’s just cheaper to destroy all the beauty that’s in these buildings,” she said.

Preservation Nation

Among urbanists in America, the advent of landmark-preservation laws in the 1960s is usually viewed as an inspiring time in urban planning: Concerned communities, academics, and fans of architecture banded together to protect beloved old buildings from the grand plans of rich developers and powerful politicians. And, remarkably enough, the Davids usually defeated the Goliaths. But have they acquired too much power? So say a growing contingent of critics who believe preservation has gotten out of hand. They include left-leaning economic policy wonks, architects, and architectural critics.

Landmarking is under attack on two fronts: architectural and economic. Critics in the first category are not opposed to landmarking, but worry that architecturally undistinguished buildings and neighborhoods are winning landmark status for political or sentimental reasons. The result, they say, is a public that embraces architectural nostalgia rather than innovation. At the same time, some economists and policy experts maintain that cities are limiting their economic potential by constraining the supply of new housing and commercial development through too much landmarking. The outcome: Most desirable cities are too expensive for middle-class families.

This past year, Harvard economist Ed Glaeser, in his book Triumph of the City, attacked landmarking, along with such restrictions as zoning that limits density or requires parking lots. Glaeser points to the case of a proposed 30-story addition, designed by Norman Foster, at 980 Madison Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, that was rejected by the Landmarks Preservation Commission even though it would have kept the original 1950 limestone gallery building as well. “The cost of restricted development is that protected areas become more expensive and exclusive,” writes Glaeser. Legions of urban policy bloggers around the country agree.

The aesthetic critique of landmarking is also gaining currency. Rem Koolhaas mounted an exhibition at New York’s New Museum last spring that was a broadside against landmarking. “[Koolhaas] paints a picture of an army of well-meaning but clueless preservationists who, in their zeal to protect the world’s architectural legacies, end up debasing them by creating tasteful scenery for docile consumers while airbrushing out the most difficult chapters of history,” reported the New York Times.

These issues may be most extreme in New York, where the razing of McKim, Mead & White’s Pennsylvania Station in 1963 still stings. But similar controversies have erupted in older cities across the country. What the Washington City Paper calls “the weaponization of preservation” includes the efforts of the Tenleytown Historical Society to prevent American University from expanding its campus by pushing landmark status for an entire block to protect the fairly banal 1904 Immaculata Seminary.

In Boston, tradition often trumps the new. “The South End is very restrictive about what you can do to your buildings, in many cases with very good reason,” says architect and preservation expert David Fixler. Yet people can be prevented from making changes just “to keep things the way they are.” Sometimes officials require new construction be designed in an architecturally contextual manner, even when the building is an inherently modern structure. In San Francisco, on the other hand, the Historic Preservation Commission has responded to criticism that Modernism is underappreciated by seeking protection of such undistinguished modern buildings as the 1959 North Beach Branch Library.

Critics and defenders of landmarking tend to agree on one key point: that the drive to landmark buildings of questionable significance is caused by a larger problem of communities feeling powerless to stop unwanted development. “Preservation has become an all-functioning tool for all sorts of operations,” says Sarah Williams Goldhagen, architecture critic for The New Republic. “It’s being used to prevent or to determine the direction of development because city planners are so disempowered, rather than because these buildings or districts are by any objective standards worth preserving.”

Yet preserving historic buildings is important for cultural and even economic reasons. In the 1980s, New York City theater owners near Times Square were tempted to sell their buildings to developers who would put up office towers in their place. An economist like Glaeser might applaud such market efficiency. But New York’s historic theaters are part of the city’s identity. When the city landmarked the theaters, it allowed owners to sell development rights to adjacent parcels. Today, Times Square has tall office buildings as well as a vibrant theater district. “Tens of millions of dollars go into Broadway, and it’s a major economic engine for the city,” notes Simeon Bankoff of New York’s Historic Districts Council. “They’re only there because they’re landmarked.”

Preservationists believe that central cities are economically successful because of landmark laws, not in spite of then. What Glaeser and others fail to appreciate is that there is excess demand to live in Manhattan or San Francisco precisely because of the architectural quality of the built environment.

Ben Adler is a contributing writer for The Nation.

Park Avenue Armory

Pattern Language: In an ongoing restoration and renovation of a New York City landmark, the architects bring subtlety and boldness to the process.
By Suzanne Stephens

Certain modern architects view the restoration of historic buildings like an archaeological dig that exhumes alterations over time and places the resulting evidence on display. Basel-based architects Herzog & de Meuron (with Platt Byard Dovell White as executive architect) approached the restoration of the Park Avenue Armory between 66th and 67th Streets in New York in this manner. The architects also introduce an intriguing process where their own interventions add a new layer to their exposure of the sediments of history.

The Armory, a Gothic Revival brick fortress designed by Charles Clinton in 1880 for the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard, required repair work on the exterior along with requisite infrastructural and code-compliant upgrades. In addition to the revitalization of a 55,000-square-foot drill hall, the team confronted an array of 18 period rooms originally fitted out by legendary designers, architects, and decorators such as Louis C. Tiffany’s Associated Artists, Stanford White, and the Herter Brothers. Some of the art-encrusted rooms used by the affluent volunteers to the National Guard remain almost intact; others were shabbily altered.

In 2006, the nonprofit Park Avenue Armory Conservancy, with Rebecca Robertson as president and executive director, leased the five-story structure from the state to create an adventurous arts venue for dance, theater, and art performances, plus exhibitions, along with artists-in-residence studios. (And it will still continue to house 100 homeless women in its upper reaches.) The $200 million restoration—of which $84 million has been spent—is expected to be completed in five years.

While the Conservancy wanted to keep the lushness of the late-19th-century architecture and design, Robertson feared the stiffness and embalmed quality of meticulous period restorations. She turned to Herzog & de Meuron, impressed by the firm’s inventive deployment of materials, surfaces, and craft in its work. “Seeing the copper-clad Signal Box in Basel [1995] was crucial,” she says.

In the fall of 2011, two period rooms by Herzog & de Meuron opened to the public. As partner Ascan Mergenthaler explains, the team worked with each room’s basic identity, choosing not to eliminate all traces of later modifications. The idea was to show the evolution of the rooms “as a wash of time,” in Robertson’s words. The tortuous task involved delayering (manually or chemically stripping recent accretions from the surfaces) as well as overprinting (see below), which simulates abstractly underlying patterns—in addition to cleaning and restoration.

With the second floor’s Renaissance Revival room for Company D, designed in 1880 by Pottier & Stymus, the team restored the original mahogany woodwork, plus a herringbone parquet floor that replaced the 1880 one. Originally, the ceilings and walls were stenciled, but later had been covered by Adamesque plaster scrollwork and painted, with other areas concealed by plasterboard. Where areas were damaged by the removal of the scrollwork and other scars of use, the team glazed the surface with a reddish field color discovered to be typical of the background’s metallic paints. The stenciling under the plasterboard remained intact in the delayering.

In the next part of the process, the architects printed a new pattern on top of the original circular stenciling to create an integrated tracery that picked up the background’s copper tones. The stenciled, laser-cut pattern appears distinct from the original stenciling owing to its abstraction of basic geometric shapes, but retains the size and proportions of existing patterns, albeit emphasized with a metallic shimmer. The architects also designed a chandelier similar in proportion to the original gaslit one, but this time with copper arms and tinted-glass globes over halogen lamps. New copper chain-link curtains add a gleam to the room while shielding glare from the windows (aided by window coverings). All of this subtle surgery creates an evocative space for small dinners and receptions and requires more than one keen glance to know that a modern architect was there.

Another room on the second floor, for Company E, also decorated in 1880 by Pottier & Stymus in the Renaissance Revival style, offers an easier setting in which to detect the presence of the modern architect. A new gridded bronze lighting fixture dominates the space. Here, too, Herzog & de Meuron removed the Tudor Revival plaster strapwork and wallpaper, added in 1892, to reveal the earlier stenciling, and repaired damaged spots with plaster in a copper field color matching the surroundings. Since the room will be used for small theatrical and musical performances, the team wanted a lighting fixture that could be raised and lowered. While the modern fixture seems ungainly in comparison with the firm’s more nuanced gestures, it fits in with the raw, austere look of the cleaned oak paneling.

One of Herzog & de Meuron’s more daring future proposals concerns the Colonel’s Reception Room on the south side of the first floor, originally designed by the Herter Brothers. Its French black walnut paneling has remained reasonably intact, yet almost everything above a certain datum is too far gone to be delayered. So the architects suggest covering upper woodwork—which had been added later—plus walls and ceiling with a removable white paint. Since the space is planned to be used as a conductor’s suite and for other events, the mixed time warp arguably would provide an arresting backdrop. Nearby they envision converting a room into a copper-lined “megavator” to take heavy loads to the second floor, and for a moving performance space.

Not every move is as provocative: Herzog & de Meuron is making few visible interventions in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, now the arena for a number of theatrical and dance productions. Nevertheless, the firm hopes to strip the lower parts of the hall to reveal the full arc of the room’s barrel-vaulted cast-iron trusses. Then on the first floor, the Field and Staff Room, also designed by Pottier & Stymus, replete with taxidermied animal heads, will be redone as a bar, with a new copper ceiling, chandelier, and fittings. The architects’ proposal for the mostly intact library on the other side of the main corridor involves taking the room originally designed by Louis C. Tiffany’s Associated Artists, with a young Stanford White as consultant, back to its 1880 decorative scheme, lost in part after its conversion to a trophy gallery. For its new use as an archive for the history of the Armory, Herzog & de Meuron plans to repaint the ceiling where the original panels are too far gone, and reinstate bookshelves. The restoration should complement the intact Veterans Room next door, also executed by Tiffany, White, et al.

The architects’ efforts so far have generated a refulgent ambience with a warm coppery glow, a burnished gleam in the walls and ceilings, and a lustrous sheen of the wood paneling. As Jorge Otero-Pailos states (page 42), Herzog & de Meuron’s work specializes in echoing the original, transformed by time. The ingenious approach shows that today’s modern architects can still capture a sense of the new, while enhancing and revivifying the old.

Architect:
Herzog & de Meuron

Executive Architect: Platt Byard Dovell White

Location: 643 Park Avenue, New York, USA

Completion Date: (partial) October 2011

Gross square footage: 190,000 square feet

Cost: $84 million to date

Restoration Redux

Photo © Christian Richters
At the Neues Museum in Berlin, David Chipperfield and Julian Harrap saw history as a series of layers, both old and new.

Top architects are tackling historic buildings in surprising ways.

By Jorge Otero-Pailos

Preservation has returned to the center of architectural theory and practice, after languishing in the margins for over half a century. Just a decade ago, it would have been impossible to think that the stakes of the field would be set by projects like David Chipperfield and Julian Harrap’s restoration of the Neues Museum in Berlin, Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s subtle morphing of Lincoln Center and the High Line in New York, Rem Koolhaas’s forensic preservation of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, or Herzog & de Meuron’s adaptation of the Park Avenue Armory in New York. Back then, such figures rarely involved themselves in preservation—not simply because they had defined their careers through new construction, but because they saw it as rather unimaginative work. Now these architects approach preservation projects with anxious care. It is as if preservation were the hardest move, the piked double Arabian with full twist, of architectural gymnastics. If so, then a profound reordering of the criteria for judging architectural excellence is taking place.

What makes the Neues Museum shocking is the level of restraint the architects demonstrated, at a time when it was common to hire world-class designers precisely to intimidate preservation commissions into allowing egregious “adaptations” of historic buildings into contemporary “icons.” Against the grain of the grand gesture, Chipperfield and Harrap opted for the precision of discreet interventions. Their design consisted mostly of removing historically insignificant elements. When they did add, they did so to enhance what was there, as one adds salt to bring out the flavor of a dish instead of covering it with sauce. For instance, they added subtle tints to the lacunae in decorative patterns to reintegrate the losses into a complete image. Even the most emphatically new elements, like the grand staircase, echo the form of the lost original.

This echoing approach to situating architecture is a key departure from previous models. An echo is by definition not a facsimile of the original voice, and therefore not a “restoration” in the traditional sense. It is the return of that voice from the future, transformed by the time that separates it from the original. An echo cannot return the original in its pure form. It returns a cleft original, bearing the dividing mark of a split temporality that cannot be easily located as part of the present. The Neues Museum was brought back deceptively intact, but in fact profoundly changed.

Prior to the High Line, “adaptive reuse” was invariably understood to mean the process whereby an old building suffered changes for the satisfaction of new uses according to a fixed logic of contemporary architecture. With the High Line, the meaning of the term began to shift to signify the mutual adaptation of contemporary architecture and old buildings to each other. The shift is subtle but important because it implies a revision of one of our discipline’s foundational ideas: that contemporary architecture comes into existence through its confrontation with building. We had taken it as a given that the word “building” stood for new construction. Now it is clear that contemporary architecture can also emerge by adapting an old construction. The old criterion that new architecture was only possible through a new building is dead.

Koolhaas’s master plan to update the Hermitage Museum, in time for its 250th anniversary in 2014, is another example of producing contemporary architecture through (as opposed to next to, or on top of) old buildings. Koolhaas claims to avoid “declarative architectural interventions,” and turns to preservation for a new form of expression. His strategy is to forensically retain all traces of the old buildings, even the dusty showcases, but to relocate every object, leaving some rooms empty in anticipation of what the future may bring. So he expresses contemporary architecture as an ephemeral process more than a permanent object, a way of opening (old) buildings to new meanings. The Hermitage signals another important new direction, away from the past as history and toward questions of temporality. In the wake of Postmodernism, we are more aware and critical of the way the past is constructed. Yet we are beyond the Postmodernist antics of simply denouncing the artificiality of the past, or reproducing it ironically. The past is never delivered pure, but always comes as reconstructed evidence. We know that our answer to what makes architecture emerge within a building will be incomplete. The last word will be delivered retroactively from the future.

This circumspect attitude toward the past makes contemporary architecture not just more open to what the future might bring, but more concerned with temporality, rather than the “imageability” of space and form. The challenge is that our architectural understanding of the temporal is not as sophisticated (yet) as that of the spatial and formal dimensions of building. We are only beginning to develop the critical tools to understand the aesthetic expression of architectural temporality in political, cultural, and ethical terms. So far, time has been explored mostly as a “natural” aspect of buildings, manifested in weathering and other changes in their appearance. Yet it is also the enabling element of “cultural” aspects of buildings. Consider that the role buildings can play in collective practices of remembrance and identity formation is a function of their longevity. Preservation involves designing and formalizing such practices, and as such, it helps people use buildings to imagine themselves as part of local communities, and even larger societies. Perhaps this is partly why contemporary architects have turned with new urgency to preservation, precisely in this historical moment of crisis, when the ethical bankruptcy of banking and the dysfunctionality of politics strain the social contract to the breaking point.

Preservation is our repository of over two centuries of experiments in how to think about the temporal dimension of architecture in political, cultural, and ethical terms. Think of Ruskin’s romantic defense of architectural “time-stains,” the patterns of dust deposited on old building stones according to the chisel marks of ancient stone carvers. His championed aesthetic cannot be dissociated from his left-leaning politics, for he saw every modernizing effort to resurface old buildings as an attempt to deny working-class craftsmen their rightful place in the history of architecture. Ruskin’s lineage ran through the Arts and Crafts movement, but inverted its political inflection in the American hands of Louis Comfort Tiffany, famous for opulently patterned interiors.

Herzog & de Meuron’s attention to pattern is perhaps the closest that any contemporary architect may comfortably come to Tiffany. In restoring the interiors of the Armory, they deftly adapted their architecture to the old building, in an effort to open it to new political interpretations. The Armory’s original, refined aesthetic reinforced social segmentation within the military, by making uneducated servicemen feel unwelcome. As the army democratized, the interiors were remodeled accordingly. Rather than recreating Tiffany, or imposing a new architectural language, the architects created a contemporary architectural aesthetic by overlaying traces of the pedestrian elements they removed as ghosted outlines, such that their erasure seems incomplete. By keeping the ghosted layers of kitsch added by less refined middle-class officers, they both return the Tiffany originals and change their political charge to reflect the military’s long (and imperfect) pursuit of social equity through meritocracy. Herzog & de Meuron return an echo of Tiffany in a palimpsest. Through preservation, they achieve an expression of architectural temporality that attends to the political ramifications of culture more than they have in any of their other works.

Architects’ shift from the pursuit of signature styles to a creative exploration of preservation enables them to deepen the significance of form and space through sharper expressions of temporality. In the process, architects are becoming more critically engaged in the inherited cultural, political, and ethical issues that define our moment, without feeling the need to celebrate or deny them. Our profession’s current commitment to preservation will most likely not last long. Its impact on how we think about architecture and how we articulate our commitments through design, however, may well find echoes in the future.

Jorge Otero-Pailos is an architect, artist, and associate professor of historic preservation at Columbia.

Lucy G. Moses Preservation Awards – Winner!

Congratulations team! We received the Moses Award (The New York Landmarks Conservancy) for the Banner Building, the Conservancy’s highest honors for outstanding preservation efforts.

The Awards ceremony will be at the New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West (an Award winner) on Wednesday, April 25, starting at 6:00pm, with a reception starting at around 7:00. Peg Breen, the Conservancy president, will make the presentation with a powerpoint and a few comments about each project. 

Date:
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Check-in 5:30
Ceremony: 6:00
Reception: 7:00

Where:
The New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West

Tickets:
Click here to purchase tickets or contact
Jenna Smith jennasmith@nylandmarks.org
212.995.5260

About the Awards

The Moses Awards are the Conservancy’s highest honors for outstanding preservation efforts. Named in honor of dedicated New Yorker and noted philanthropist Lucy G. Moses, the Awards recognize the property owners, builders, architects, artisans, and designers who renew the beauty and utility of New York City’s distinctive architecture. The annual Moses Awards celebrate the success of historic preservation and its role in the economic, social, and cultural vitality of the City.

Preservation Awards are given to projects that demonstrate excellence in the restoration, preservation, or adaptive use of historic buildings, streetscapes, and landscapes that preserve commercial, residential, institutional, religious, and public buildings. Other possible categories include community groups or organizations that foster neighborhood revitalization.

The Very Best in Preservation

Recipients of the 2011 National Preservation Awards include individuals and projects epitomizing …

By Magazine Editors | From Preservation | November/December 2011 

2011 National Preservation Awards

Pamela Bates

Credit: Matt Teuten

The Peter H. Brink Award for Individual Achievement: Pamela Bates, Lowell’s Boat Shop

Pamela Bates grew up landlocked in Longmeadow, Mass. But as the daughter of an accomplished fly-fisherman, “I was always gravitating toward the water,” she says. In the 1970s, she and her husband moved to the Massachusetts coast and discovered Lowell’s Boat Shop, then a commercial boat-building operation: “I would just go to the boat shop for the joy of purchasing oar locks,” she says. 

The country’s oldest continuously operating boat shop, Lowell’s was founded in 1793 on a stretch of the Merrimack River about 40 miles northeast of Boston. Known for its wooden dories, the shop remained in the Lowell family until 1976, when it was sold.

Lowell’s changed hands again in 1992, when the Newburyport Maritime Society acquired the property and committed to preserving the boat shop as a working museum. But little more than a decade later, its commitment was imperiled. Unable to support the shop financially, the society was forced to sell.

With developers eyeing the prime waterfront location, Bates assembled a coalition (later called the Lowell’s Maritime Foundation) which purchased the landmark. The nonprofit took title in 2007 and has operated Lowell’s ever since. Bates serves as the foundation’s executive director.

In that time, says her colleague Graham McKay, the number of employees grew from zero to three, the shop received grant funding for a new roof and windows, and boat production increased from one boat per year to eight. Lowell’s, he says, “has gone from being quiet and unwelcoming to a vibrant and inviting working museum. For all this work, Pam Bates has not received one penny.”

Focused on preserving and perpetuating the art and craft of wooden boat building, Lowell’s remains “a well-kept secret,” Bates says, but she is determined to change that. She hopes to expand existing dock space to accommodate more waterfront programming and start a rowing program for patients recovering from serious illnesses or those with special needs. Because every boat assembled at Lowell’s is handcrafted, she has a particular interest in establishing an apprentice program.

Bates has dedicated herself to Lowell’s for almost a decade but has no plans to retire. “The boat shop has a way of capturing people,” she says. “It’s a piece of living history … part of my heart.”  

American Brewery

As seen from the back seat of George Holback’s family station wagon more than 50 years ago, the American Brewery building in East Baltimore was “a place the Addams family might have lived.”

The five-story, Victorian-era structure, built in 1887 for the J.F. Wiessner & Sons Brewing Co., “was a big, scary, intimidating building,” Holback says. “But I knew it as the building I wanted to work on.”

Holback got his chance in early 2008, when Humanim, a nonprofit social services agency, chose his architectural firm, Cho Benn Holback + Associates, to design the rehabilitation of the building, which is located in one of Baltimore’s poorest neighborhoods, north of the Inner Harbor.

A $375,000 loan from the National Trust Loan Fund was used to stabilize the brewery, and the National Trust Community Investment Corporation pitched in $5.4 million in historic and new markets tax credit equity. Holes in the mansard roof, broken windows, and an interior filled with pigeon droppings at least six inches deep were just some of the challenges that work crews had to address during the 16-month, $24 million adaptive use project.

Humanim moved into the old brewery in April 2009. Offices and meeting spaces now fill rooms that once contained conveyor belts and grain chutes, and a new lighting system reveals architectural and industrial details obscured for decades. Last year, the Maryland Historical Trust recognized the success of the rehabilitation with its Project Excellence Award.

“You can see this building from all over the city, poking up over Clifton Park,” says Holback. “Now knitted into the old industrial relic is the story of a nonprofit trying to bring change to that area.”

Acworth Meetinghouse

For nearly two centuries, a beloved icon known locally as the Church on the Hill towered above the rooftops of Acworth, N.H. When residents noticed in 2005 that the steeple atop Acworth Meetinghouse was leaning, they sprang into action to save the 1821 building.

In January 2006, the steeple was removed and lowered onto pylons on the town common. Following recommendations from the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources and using a grant from the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance, members of the restoration committee worked with timber-frame preservation specialist Arron Sturgis to complete a project assessment. With grants and private donations forthcoming, they initiated a five-year restoration.

Crews repaired water damage in the church basement and stabilized the bell tower from the bottom up, replacing rotten wood and bolstering posts. They also rewired the building, added exterior storm windows, repaired the shutters, and repainted the walls. (The renovated church also has accessible bathrooms and a much-needed kitchen.) In June 2009, the people of Acworth watched as the historic steeple was hoisted back into place.

By the time the restoration committee disbanded earlier this year, members had raised more than $330,000 for the nearly $640,000 project. Sturgis calculates that, by relying on local craftspeople, he cut projected costs by as much as 30 percent. Engaging the community in both grassroots fundraising and restoration earned the project high marks in the eyes of Preservation Awards judges.

Kathi Bradt, who worked for the Meetinghouse Restoration Committee, says that the fully restored building is “remarkable … it’s like a wedding cake sitting here in the middle of town.”

Downtown Women’s Center

The residents of the Downtown Women’s Center in Los Angeles have found a fresh start in their new home on San Pedro Street. And the same can be said of the center’s 1926 Gothic Revival structure, which reopened last December after a $26 million restoration.

Pica+Sullivan Architects transformed the space into a full-service facility for homeless and low-income women living on Los Angeles’ Skid Row. Per their plans, crews repaired the crumbling facade, updated all mechanical systems, and completed seismic work to bring the building up to code. They also created 71 new residential units with private baths and kitchenettes. Each residential floor features common areas, including computer and exercise rooms. There is also a library and a rooftop garden. The ground floor of the LEED Silver-certified building now houses a six-room health clinic, a small pharmacy, offices for a psychiatrist and social workers, and a mammogram room.

Forty local designers donated time and resources to decorate the apartment units and common spaces, creating an environment that CEO Lisa Watson calls a source of pride for the women at the center. And the residents were consulted every step of the way to ensure they had a voice in the creation of their new home.

“It’s a great example of how good design makes such an impact on our lives,” says Site Director Joseph Altepeter, echoing the thoughts of the Awards jurors who recognized the center for its ambitious restoration of a historic building.

Seashore Farmers’ Lodge 

The Seashore Farmers’ Lodge on the tiny barrier island of Sol Legare, S.C., was erected in 1915 to serve freedmen and their families who could not secure loans or insurance policies at white-run banks and firms in the segregated South. “This was our community center, this was our church, it was our school, it was our funeral home,” local resident Ernest L. Parks says. “It was everything.”

The site has a distinguished history. The famed 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first official black unit to fight in the Civil War, camped there before the Battle of Sol Legare and the assault on Fort Wagner (made famous in the film Glory) in 1863. The building was constructed by residents who collected contributions toward the cost of materials.

But by the 1960s, limited funds, tropical storms, and the northern migration of many African Americans had nearly doomed the structure. After residents built a new community center down the road in the 1970s, the lodge was left abandoned for almost 30 years.

In 2005, Parks returned to his hometown after years away and joined Bill “Cubby” Wilder, a former town councilman, in trying to save the deteriorating lodge. At Wilder’s urging, the Town of James Island (which had authority over Sol Legare) offered $55,000 to jump-start restoration work in 2006. The lodge’s appearance on the A&E program Flip This House, and a 2007 listing on the National Register of Historic Places, attracted additional volunteer attention and funding.

Starting in March 2009, workers shored up the side of the building; removed, cleaned, and replaced pine siding; hand-dug continuous footers where the lodge’s original palm trunk foundation had rotted; and replaced a hurricane-damaged balcony. Members of the Concerned Citizens of Sol Legare Foundation’s Ad Hoc Committee and other volunteers collected furniture and heirlooms to display inside. Innovative educational programming is one reason the project was recognized by Preservation Awards judges.

Initial estimates to rescue the lodge neared $400,000. Yet when the lodge reopened in April, total costs were less than $140,000. “There’s nothing like this,” says Corie Hipp, the project’s marketing coordinator. “Nothing like this anywhere.”

New Research Reveals the Safety Hazards of Green Building

By Katie Frasier
This article originally appeared in ENR Mountain States.

During the past several years, the green building trend has soared, with an increase in government incentives and availability of affordable supplies driving a huge growth of U.S. Green Building Council LEED-certified buildings. With the LEED program ambitiously hoping to certify one million commercial buildings by 2020, it’s no surprise that this trend has come under some scrutiny. And while most great rewards often have a price, in this case it could be at the expense of the safety of construction workers on the job.

When Matthew Hallowell, assistant professor in the Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering Department at the University of Colorado Boulder, became aware of a study that found evidence of a nearly 50 percent increase of injury rate had occurred in LEED-certified projects over traditional construction, he found himself wondering about the cause.

“That original work was the catalyst,” Hallowell says. “What we proposed to do was a comprehensive analysis where we looked credit by credit at the construction and design for this type of building and how that compared to what we traditionally do. LEED is growing very quickly, but prior to this, no one had paid much attention to the safety involved.”

The team’s greatest challenge in conducting the study, titled “Identification of Safety Risks for High-Performance Sustainable Construction Projects,” was gathering empirical data rather than opinion-based anecdotes. To do this, Hallowell says the student researcher conducted site visits, observed construction processes, obtained and analyzed project documentation and reviewed job-hazard analyses and injury reports—in addition to conducting interviews at multiple organizational levels.

With the information gathered, Hallowell and his team of researchers were able to identify 14 LEED credentials that may create heightened risks to construction workers. Most notable risks include a perceived 41% higher risk associated with installing sustainable roofing, a perceived 37% increase in risk from installing PV panels for on-site renewable energy, a perceived 36% additional risk of cuts, abrasions and lacerations from construction waste management and perceived 32% heightened risk of falls from installing skylights and atriums to meet the daylight and views credit.

“I was very surprised when I read the conclusions,” says Brendan Owens, vice president of LEED Technical Development at USGBC. “LEED buildings are substantively different than non-LEED buildings and while there are risks in all construction, we did not expect green-building construction would have higher incidence of accidents. I don’t know that a lot of people would have held an opinion that was different than mine prior to this report.”

The fact that the LEED rating system had yet to identify how to improve workers’ safety was something the USGBC had already been working closely with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for several months to evaluate.

“We understood there were opportunities to learn from the safety community and help take their expertise to understand where we could create LEED credit language that inherently values the mitigation of risks to the constructors,” says Owens. “Still, it’s helpful and important that people are studying these issues and identifying opportunities to get better.”

One question that arose from these studies was whether a building could truly be considered sustainable if the health and safety of its constructors were at risk. “Worker safety and health must be considered as an integral component of sustainable building design, construction and operation,” says Hallowell. He reasons that adding LEED credentials based on safety measures would be beneficial to maintaining worker safety.

But Owens notes that rather than putting in place a credential that recognizes regulations contractors should already be complying with, LEED officials are looking to evolve the rating system as a whole.

“Right now we’re trying to understand where the leverage points are within the rating system for opportunities that will allow us to make it better,” says Owens. “If we can become better informed about risks involved, we can improve the requirements of the rating systems and enhance safety. This study is an initial step in that direction.”

Whether the findings of this study have surprised or validated opinions of individuals around the industry, Owens asserts that the information is useful for everyone to consider. “I really hope that people will be looking at this study and learning from it. That’s certainly what we’ll be doing.”

Examples of Identifying and Reducing Risks

In addition to identifying the increased risks in building for LEED certification, Hallowell and his team followed up with a study (due to publish in February) that found suggested mitigations for the added risks. It’s important to note that though these are listed under the LEED credential the construction methods meet, many of these risks are not unique to green building. Prevention efforts can also be applied to construction of traditional buildings that might incorporate one or more of these elements.

LEED Credit: Brownfield Redevelopment

Identified Risk: Extensive earthwork operations create a higher risk of falling or collapsing and hazards from the disposal of contaminants.

Suggested Mitigation: Workers could use impermeable plastic liners in the beds of heavy equipment and thoroughly wash all equipment at the end of each workday to reduce contamination.

LEED Credit: Stormwater Quality Control

Identified Risk: Workers have an increased risk of falling from increased excavation and trenching.

Suggested Mitigation: Designing detention ponds with gradual slopes to avoid steep embankments may help reduce risk of falling. Contractors could plan concurrent tasks away from the excavation.

LEED Credit: Heat Island Effect—Roof

Identified Risk: White roofing options can be heavier and slipperier than traditional black roofing material, which increases the risk for overexertion and falls. The bright material can interrupt line of sight and increase the risk of slips and falls during installation.

Suggested Mitigation: Tan or light gray membranes could be used to decrease reflectivity, or contractors could require tinted eyewear. Rubber walkpads could be provided for added traction, and contractors could purchase a greater number of smaller rolls to avoid overexertion from weight.

LEED Credit: Innovative Wastewater Technologies

Identified Risk: Risk of exposure to hazardous chemicals comes from construction a dual waste water system from installing additional piping.

Suggested Mitigation: Contractors might require non-polyester gloves and respiratory protection and employ extensive quality-control measures.

LEED Credit: Optimize Energy Performance

Identified Risk: An increased risk of falling comes from a more ladder time installing added wires and controls, and double caulking.

Suggested Mitigation: Designers could incorporate prefabricated panels of the exterior skin system, framing, structure and vapor barrier, and contractors could caulk from the building’s interior before installing finishing materials.

LEED Credit: On-Site Renewable Energy

Identified Risk: Falls and overexertion are more likely from installing heavy PV panels, usually on the roof.

Suggested Mitigation: Designers could place PV panels closer to the ground or keep them as far from the edge of the roof as possible. Higher parapets and designed tie-off points may also lessen the risk of falling.



LEED Credit: Enhanced Commissioning

Identified Risk: The presence of commissioners distracts workers, increasing risk of falls and injuries.

Suggested Mitigation: Commissioning agents could receive a site-specific orientation and be provided with personal protective equipment. Agents could be required to pass an OSHA safety course.

LEED Credit: Construction Waste Management

Identified Risk: “Dumpster diving” to retrieve mistakenly trashed recyclable materials increases risk of sprains and cuts.

Suggested Mitigation: Suggested solutions include utilizing a third-party, local waste management company to sort the recyclable material offsite, using multiple, smaller waste receptacles around the construction site, or creating an industry-wide, color-coded labeling system to differentiate recycling from trash.

LEED Credit: Outdoor Air Delivery Monitoring

Identified Risk: Time spent at heights to wire and mount the permanent monitoring system increases risk of falls.

Suggested Mitigation: This risk may be eliminated by incorporating the monitoring equipment into the prefabrication process.

LEED Credit: Construction IAQ Management Plan

Identified Risk: A higher risk of falls and overexertion occurs from increased ladder time maintaining ductwork.

Suggested Mitigation: Using different materials for the prefabricated “caps” on the ends of the duct, such as a universal magnetic cap, may make installation less awkward and therefore quicker and easier. Also suggested was the off-site fabrication of ductwork for longer sections to decrease time spent on the ladder.



LEED Credit: Low-Emitting Materials—Adhesives/Sealants

Identified Risk: Oftentimes, “rework” is needed due to the lower quality low-emitting adhesives and sealants used. The added time spent at heights, performing overhead work and exposure to construction dust creates a heightened risk for workers.

Suggested Mitigation: Designers and contractors could work together to find available products that meet Rule #1168 while also standing up to expected temperatures and compatibility to other construction materials used. This would eliminate the need for added “rework.”

LEED Credit: Indoor Chemical and Pollutant Source Control

Identified Risk: Workers have a heightened risk to fall hazards due to overhead work and working at heights during piping and ductwork installation.

Suggested Mitigation: Designers could install HVAC systems under the floor so they’re easier to install and maintain.

LEED Credit: Controllability of Systems—Lighting

Identified Risk: Complex wiring associated with occupancy sensors and timing controls increase risk of electrical shock to workers. Additional time spent wiring these systems at heights increases the risk of falls.

Suggested Mitigation: Some elements of the systems could potentially be prefabricated, decreasing time spent working with the wires onsite. Designers might locate sensors at reachable heights rather than on ceilings to eliminate time spent of ladders.

LEED Credit: Daylight and Views: Daylight 75% of Spaces

Identified Risk: Large skylights, windows or atriums increase time spent working near large, exposed openings at great heights.

Suggested Mitigation: Designers could create a courtyard to meet the requirements or minimize the depth of the building as an alternative to atriums and skylights. If these elements are included, additional precautions could be taken, such as blocking off areas below overhead work, using equipment such as man lifts and scissor lifts when possible and using tie-offs and barriers near exposed openings.

Katie Frasier is a freelance construction writer and social media specialist in charge of promoting jobsite safety. She has a background in magazine journalism and has previously written for a number of national publications. Reach her at  www.workboots.com or e-mail: Katie@cat5.com.

LPC Approves Plans for Governors Island

East, Ticker | Tuesday, February 7, 2012 | Tom Stoelker.

In a unanimous decision, the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the first phase of plans by the Trust for Governors Island to restore and revamp the island. The vision includes a paisley-like landscape by West 8 on the terrace in front of McKim, Mead and White designed Liggett Hall. Way-finding by Pentagram and lighting by Susan Tillotson also made the cut. For a detailed breakdown of the designs click here.

Retrofits Always “Greener?”

As a new study from the Preservation Green Lab [part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation] shows, the answer is “a resounding ‘usually.’”

Turns out, the question of building reuse is much more nuanced and interesting than can be answered with an blanket strategy – which is not at all surprising. Whether an existing building should be retrofitted or demolished is a question of use [both previous and planned], climate, construction type/materials, etc – and also a clear understanding of carbon footprinting: 

“Since it can take decades for a new building to “pay back” its embodied carbon through improvements in operational efficiency (see “A 2030 Challenge for Building Product Manufacturers,” EBN Feb. 2011), this study’s conclusions about carbon emissions should come as no surprise: based on climate-change considerations alone, almost every useable building in every region of the U.S. should remain standing—even if these buildings are not retrofitted to improve energy performance. Carbon payback time for the buildings studied ranged from 10 to 80 years.” 

In any case, studies like this should have a big impact on how we think of using, and reusing, our existing urban fabric – both as designers, and as people with a vested interest in legitimate, effective responses to climate change. 

-Marilyn.

Historic Buildings May Be Greener Than You Think

 

Historic Buildings May Be Greener Than You Think 

By JOANNA M. FOSTER 

Henry Street Settlement

The Henry Street Settlement headquarters on the Lower East Side is undergoing a green retrofit.

In New York City, a conflict has long been perceived between historic preservation and urban sustainability goals. Older buildings are often seen as outdated energy hogs that can’t pull their weight, efficiency-wise, in a city that is expected to add a million new residents by 2030. About 55 percent of the city’s 838,337 buildings were constructed before 1940, half a century before the notion of green LEED building certification was even dreamed up.

Estimating that the building sector is responsible for 75 percent of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, PlaNYC 2030, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s sustainability plan for New York, made improving the performance of older buildings a top priority.

To help get the process started, the Municipal Art Society announced last week that it is working on a “greening” manual for owners of historic buildings protected by landmark status that will be available online at no cost this fall. “Greening New York City’s Landmarks: A Guide for Property Owners” is a collaboration between the society, the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the architects Cook + Fox and the environmental consulting firm Terrapin.

Some 29,000 buildings in New York City are now protected through designations by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Despite prevailing conceptions, said Lisa Kersavage, the senior director for preservation and sustainability at the society, many historic buildings actually already incorporate energy-efficient design features — a legacy of having been built before the advent of cheap energy and modern mechanical systems. In those days, natural ventilation and light and the collection of water in cisterns were standard in quality construction.

The greening process is often more about optimizing existing elements, like ensuring that cross-ventilation isn’t inadvertently blocked, than about radical retrofits. Many of the improvements suggested in the manual won’t even require a building permit or any special permission from the Landmarks Preservation Commission but could reduce energy use by 20 to 25 percent, planners say.

“Since so many rooftops in the city are flat, we’ve even been getting approval for solar panels for landmark buildings,” Ms. Kersavage said. If you can’t see it, it can’t disturb the aesthetic.”

(One tricky renovation, however, is adding insulation to older buildings, which can effectively alter the internal dew point and lead to structural damage. Energy efficiency improvements that damage the long-term resilience of the building are rarely a worthwhile tradeoff.)

On another preservationist front, a report released this week by the Preservation Green Lab pointed out that it can take up to 80 years for a new energy-efficient building to make up for the carbon dioxide expended during its construction.

One might also keep in mind that New York City already generates 10 million tons of construction and demolition waste annually — 60 percent of its total waste stream.

“Retaining and repairing existing buildings, rather than just starting all over again, is by far the smartest approach,” Ms. Kersavage said.

The Municipal Art Society is currently working on a historic retrofit demonstration project at the Henry Street Settlement headquarters on the Lower East Side.