THIS AWARD SHOWCASES THE HARMONY that can be reached by pairing historic buildings and modern development. Downtown at the corner of G Street and Park Boulevard stands the Remmen Building, a historically designated Arts and Crafts building with Neoclassical details constructed in 1907 by Mr. Ole Remmen as a four-unit apartment house. Key features of the design include rounded corner bay windows with beautiful leaded glass, a rough-faced stone foundation, and a stately front porch featuring intricate columns that all contribute to bringing a sense of time and place to the downtown streetscape.
Our winner recognized this important quality when a modern mixed-use development was proposed for the prominent corner site. The developers chose to incorporate the historic building into the new development and carry out a full restoration. Care was taken to ensure that the home would be protected, and it was temporarily relocated off site during the construction process, after Heritage Architecture & Planning completed Historic American Building Survey documentation. The relocation involved the tedious and careful deconstruction and salvage of the rough-faced stone foundation, the disassembly of a remaining brick chimney, and removal and storage of the rest of the building elements.
The restoration of the house itself included repair of the ornate leaded-glass windows, doors and historic hardware, recreation of new concrete front stairs, and a fresh coat of paint matching a historic color scheme. Towards the end of the project, it was moved back onto its original site, but rotated 90 degrees to face Park Boulevard. Once back on the site, the foundation and chimney were reconstructed, and two missing chimneys were created and installed to match the historic one.
In order to enable the building to be adaptively reused by a commercial tenant, an accessibility ramp was added on the south side as part of a new public deck. One of the existing window openings at the south side was reconfigured into an accessible double door. A wheelchair lift and steel stair were added to the rear of the building to provide disabled customers access to the second floor as well as emergency egress. The rehabilitation also included the addition of a steel moment frame and lateral sheathing for seismic strengthening and a fire sprinkler system.
Now, the fully restored building functions as a vibrant link between new and old, and demonstrates how historic resources offer us an important sense of place within a changing city.
SOHO congratulates Holland Partner Group with the Commercial Restoration Award. We thank you for your vision and for turning that vision into a great project.
(Left to right) Tom Saunders, David Marshall, Adam Gressel, Brent Schertzer. Photo by Sandé Lollis
