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A Look at Five Redos
Stories worth Telling: Reviving,
Historic Midwest Buildings
by Craig Barner
If the bricks and mortar of landmark Midwest buildings could
speak, tales surely would be told of the aesthetic visions
of iconoclastic architects, the region's once-grand industrial
might and the places and events that drove millions to settle
here.
Pieces of that building heritage are still around and some
is being revived through restoration. Projects are under way
or recently completed to restore buildings that are formally
landmarked or historically significant.
Recently, Midwest Construction sought details on five of these
projects: City Hall and the Kenilworth Building in Milwaukee;
the Pet Inc. tower and Washington Apartments in St. Louis;
and the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago.
(A separate profile of the renovation of Chicago's landmark
Blackstone Hotel is also in this issue.)
Milwaukee's Material Issues
Restoring some of the materials forming the Milwaukee City
Hall is a major issue.
The $70 million project calls for the replacement of about 15,000
bricks and 13,000 terra-cotta pieces cladding the building,
copper dressing one of the towers and 2,000 windows, says Terry
Watson, senior project manager of Janesville-based J.P. Cullen
& Sons Inc., the general contractor.
The renovation was needed because the building, which opened
in 1896, was deteriorating. In 2001 netting was put on the structure,
and canopies were placed over adjacent sidewalks for protection
because pieces were coming off.
The 256,300-sq-ft, 13-story building in the German Renaissance
Revival style is noteworthy in part because it is listed on
the National Register of Historic
Places and locally landmarked. Milwaukee's H.C. Koch, the original
designer, won a design competition for the commission and the
$800 prize.
Painstaking care is being taken to duplicate the look of the
building's original materials.
Pressed brick, rather than the typical extruded brick, is being
installed to mimic the original materials, Watson says. Only
two companies in North America produce pressed brick, with I-XL
Industries Ltd. of Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, as the supplier.
"Most brick today is extruded or pushed through an opening,
cut off like bread and baked," he says. The final product
is smooth.
In contrast, pressed brick has a tough texture, and the pieces
that make up the brick are visible.
Like the brick, the same care is being taken with the terra
cotta. An existing piece in good shape is taken from the building
to make a plaster mold, and the mold is hand-packed with clay
for baking in a kiln.
"You can see fingerprints, both in the original and new
terra cotta," Watson adds.
Finally, the structural steel and tile forming the south tower
are being replaced, and it will be reclad with new copper. The
copper of the north tower will be repaired.
An atypical sight when the project is done will be the south
tower's virgin copper contrasting with the north tower's naturally
aged copper, which has turned green. An estimated 10 to 15 years
will be needed for the virgin copper to attain the green patina.
The Milwaukee-based Engberg Anderson Design Partnership Inc.
is the architect on the renovation. The project is expected
to be finished in December 2008.
Model Ts and Munitions
The Midwest's past and future is evident in the Kenilworth
Building.
Looking back, the building represents the region's industrial
past in part because the original designer was Albert Kahn,
a Detroit-based industrial architect who is credited as the
co-inventor of the assembly line with Henry Ford. Kahn's brother,
Julius, helped devise steel-reinforced concrete-"Kahncrete"-
forming the building's columns.
"It's a beautiful building with 10-ft.-tall, 20-ft.-wide
windows, very light filled and has nice, detailed brickwork,"
says Kevin Allebach, project architect in Milwaukee with Minneapolis-based
Hammel Green & Abrahamson, the designer on the renovation.
Originally built in 1914, the Kenilworth was used to build
Model T Fords. The building's image of Americana was fortified
in 1943, when the military acquired it, doubled its size to
500,000 sq ft and used it to make torpedos and other munitions
for World War II.
"It was an interesting building to go into," Allebach
adds. "There were centrifuges, firing ranges and water
tanks."
The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, which acquired the
building in 1971 for storage and other uses, recently renovated
it for $52 million. The original, five-story portion used
by Ford Motor Co. will house the Peck School of Art, and the
concrete addition on the west will be used to house students.
A pedestrian walkway was put down the building's center, reducing
the building size to about 475,000 sq ft. Two floors were
added to the student side, which will house 174 apartments
in one-, two- and three-bedroom layouts.
Other project elements included full window replacement, brick
tuck pointing and masonry restoration. Inside, the building
was given a light treatment, including keeping the distinctive,
splay-top "Kahncrete" columns.
The project was completed in September. McFarland, Wis.-based
KBS Construction was the general contractor.
A 'Brutalist' Building
St. Louis is saving a beautiful brutalist building.
The 18-story Pet Inc. tower near Busch Stadium is being converted
for $49 million to house 118 apartments named Pointe 400.
The building originally opened in 1969 to house the dairy
products company later absorbed by the Orrville, Ohio-based
J.M. Smucker Co.
Despite its relative youth, the 245,000-sq-ft building is
listed on the National Register of Historic Places in part
because of its "new brutalism" architecture style
that thrived from the 1950s to 1970s. Brutalist buildings,
which were championed by Swiss architect Le Corbusier, are
an offshoot of modernist architecture and utopian social ideals
and are often defined by harsh, bunker-like concrete walls
and repetitive, angular geometries.
Alfred Aydelott was the original architect of the Pet Inc.
tower.
The scheduling was tricky in part because tax credits were
sought by the developer, St. Louis-based Balke Brown Associates,
due to the landmark status of the building, says Andy McDonell,
project manager of Chesterfield-based Brinkmann Constructors,
the general contractor. To get the credit, the building was
required to match the original look closely, including the
windows.
The windows needed replacement because the building's new
residential use requires them to be double-paned and thermally
insulated, rather than single-paned.
The original window openings reach from floor to ceiling or
about 9 ft. tall, 4.5 ft. wide each; the former executive
floors are even taller at 14 ft. The replacement windows were
designed to match the originals-custom vertical and horizontal
aluminum mullion pieces, as well as a decorative metal center
section.
About eight months were needed for the windows to receive
approval from the National Park Service and be manufactured
before they could be installed, McDonell says.
As a result, crews did other interior work first-demolition,
build-out and other-and went back to install the windows later,
1,100 in all.
"Theoretically, I was ready for the windows on Day 2
of the project," McDonell adds. "But I had to wait
eight months for that whole process to finish before I could
start doing the windows."
Other work included interior demolition, utility line installation
and the build-out of individual units. The project was substantially
complete in December.
St. Louis-based the Lawrence Group was the restoration architect.
Renovate Me in St. Louis
Another renovation Brinkmann is overseeing is the restoration
of the Washington Apartments in St. Louis' Central West End.
The seven-story, 89,000-sq-ft facility was originally built
in 1903 for the 1904 World's Fair, then as the George Washington
Hotel. Among the guests was President Theodore Roosevelt,
who stayed in the limestone building featuring Classical Revival
style while visiting the fair.
The Washington Apartments is part of the Holy Corners Historic
District, an area of churches and other institutional buildings
from the early 20th Century clustered around Kingshighway
and Washington streets.
The building was converted to low-income housing in 1979,
Brinkmann's McDonell says. The owner, St. Louis-based McCormack
Baron Salazar, a development firm, wanted to spruce up the
building, and the $18 million project began in July.
A key project focus is to restore long-lost interior elements
to bring back the building's grandeur.
For instance, new ceilings were put up during the 1979 project,
but columns, capitals and plaster ceilings were uncovered
during the newest project and will be restored. The marble
floor of a room originally used for dining but recently used
for storage was uncovered and will be reground and polished.
And, like the Pet Inc. tower, the Washington Apartment's windows-500
in all-will be replaced. Prior to the project, about one-third
of them had been covered up with plywood, vents or air-conditioning
units.
The exterior work includes a cleaning, tuck pointing, masonry
restoration and limestone sealing. Inside, most of the finishes
will be replaced.
The project is expected to be complete in June. St. Louis-based
Trivers Associates Architects is the designer on the renovation.
Chicago's Palmer House
In November, work started on the renovation of Chicago's
ornate Palmer House Hilton, a hotel name that predates the
Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Richard Tilghman, senior vice president of Chicago-based Pepper
Construction Co., the general contractor, says work includes
the renovation of 1,000 guest rooms, public spaces, three
facades and interior stairs.
Calls to the Chicago office of New York-based Thor Equities
LLC, the building's owner since June 2005, were not returned
for details.
The project is expected to be finished in summer 2008.
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