Historic Renovations

Buildings Bring Difficulties Beyond Construction

Natural forces, either the slow effects of aging or a jolt like the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, create work for renovation specialists.

by Lucy Bodilly

In Seattle, thanks to monetary help from preservation groups, work on most of the historic buildings damaged by the 2001 earthquake is wrapping up. In Oregon, interest in specific geographic areas is projects.

Historic Seattle, a preservation board funded by the city of Seattle, made $250,000 available to building owners after the Nisqually earthquake to help pay for engineering studies on historic buildings that were severely damaged. "With some additional help from the city of Seattle, we were able to help preserve 17 properties," said John Chaney, executive director of Historic Seattle.

The effort was critical in historic preservation because the Federal Emergency Management Agency does not provide funds to restore buildings owned by nonprofits when a natural disaster occurs.

Trinity Episcopal Church, Mount Baker Presbyterian, the German Club and the Seattle Hebrew Academy all benefited through the program.

"What would we do without these buildings?" Chaney said. "We would be anywhere USA."

Cadillac Building

Contractors sought to preserve a building, but Seattle lost a landmark. It can no longer lay claim as the home of the smallest national park in the country.

The Klondike Gold Rush Museum once held that honor. With the renovation of the Cadillac Building as its new location, the title is gone, but the museum and the Cadillac Building are much better for it.?

advertisement

Renovated by Rafn, a Bellevue, Wash., general contractor, the Cadillac was the first building to be reconstructed after the Great Seattle Fire of 1906. The basement and the first floor will house the museum. The exhibits are currently being constructed and put in place, said Debbie Conway, project manager with the National Park Service.

"The museum is planned to be interactive, to draw the visitors in,"Conway said.

It starts with a description of what life was like in the 1893 depression and why rumors of gold in the Klondike encouraged so many to make the trek north. As visitors travel through the exhibits, they will start in Seattle. Then they will go down a stairway that simulates the dock where they board the ship to Alaska. Next, they will view a series of exhibits, which cost $1.3 million to build.

One exhibit shows visitors how to pan for gold; another contains a wheel of fortune. Spin the wheel and it may land on a gold strike, but is more likely to show disaster - of the 100,000 people who set out to find gold, only 30,000 arrived.

Reconstruction of the building turned out to be considerably less dangerous. Rafn faced the usual questions when working on a building before building codes and before contractors used standard construction methods. Much of the repair work was needed not because of the earthquake but due to long years of neglect.

The upper floors of the 3-story building had been unused since 1970, when the city required all hotels to install fire sprinkler systems. Pigeons were nonpaying tenants, but they did leave their mark. Mold and weather damage were also a concern.

The building floors sagged as much as 10 in. toward the middle, said Steve Storming, Rafn's director of commercial projects.

To correct the problem, Shaughnesey & Co. of Auburn, Wash., jacked up the floors and placed steel and glue-lam beams under the first floor for more support. Pioneer Masonry of Seattle restored the brickwork on the outside of the building.

Because of its long involvement with renovation projects, Rafn runs a millwork shop that recreates many of the historic elements in a typical building. At the Cadillac it restored the railings and molding.

General Contractor: Rafn, Bellevue, Wash.
Architect: Stickney Murphy Romine, Seattle
Structural Engineer: Coughlin Porter Lundeen, Seattle

Trinity Episcopal Church

The church, still home to an active parish and a food bank in downtown Seattle, was another victim of the 2001 earthquake. The first step in the salvation of the building, built in 1889, was to gut it.

That's when contractors from Rafn met their first surprise.

The building exterior is stone, but the inside walls of the building were brick with a plaster coating. Seismic upgrades called for removal of the brick and replacing it with an 8-in.-thick shotcrete shear wall.

"In order to make a smooth surface to lay the brick, the original builders threw a bunch of rubble between the stone and brick walls," said Mike Debrinsky, Rafn project manager. When Rafn removed the brick, the rubble fell into the building.

"It's not quite what we expected to find," Debrinsky said. Worse yet, with the brick and rubble missing, crews noticed quite a few holes in the outside mortar between the stonework.

In stepped Pioneer Masonry of Seattle, which repaired the stonework and strengthened the walls at the corners with helical anchors. Other seismic improvements called for attaching the floor diaphragm and roof to a steel frame.

Plaster cornices and other decorations had been removed and catalogued before demolition. Pacific Construction Systems of re-created the pieces, using the original as models. Bruce Bavard, a restoration specialist, brought in a crew of carpenters to complete the intricate woodwork

"The carpenters came from other jobs, just to work on this one," Debrinsky said. Construction cost of the project was $4.3 million, much of it raised by church members.

General Contractor: Rafn, Bellevue
Architect: Bassetti, Seattle
Structural Engineer: Quantum Consulting Engineers, Seattle
Mechanical/Electrical Engineer: Denontigny Engineers, Kent

Triangle Building

If Portland is considered a city where individualists are the norm, then the Triangle Building is in the right place. Originally built as a wire rope warehouse, it was a heavily supported structure, but its location by the railroad tracks in downtown Portland caused a leaning effect over the years.

"It looks like a building in the Oregon Vortex," said Mike Purcell, owner of Gray Purcell, the Portland firm that renovated the building. The vortex, near Gold Hill in southern Oregon, is known for its oddly tilted structures and light fixtures, supposedly caused by a glitch in the earth's magnetic field.

Some of the building's odd curves found on the exterior walls come from the need to build around a railroad spur that runs nearby. The rest - such as the windows that are plumb but not straight - are from the train vibration.

"It is definitely a building with character," Purcell said.

The Triangle had been empty for several years , but a team of lawyers bought the space to be renovated and used as offices. From the outside it appeared that the building would be better off demolished, but structural engineers from KPFF of Portland assured the owners that it could be safely salvaged.

One initial concern was that the building would be overrun with rats because of the railyards and proximity to the Willamette River. "Our guys crawled under it to see if there were rats, but instead we found eight nasty looking feral cats," said Tom Clark, the project manager.

Workers from Gray Purcell captured the cats and relocated them. The cats did little damage, but people had been living in the building without permission, adding to the amount of cleanup work necessary before construction could start.

The renovation should qualify for gold LEED status. Many of the materials were reused on the interior, including 10,000 board ft. of lumber.

The renovation included a seismic retrofit. Crews placed concrete on the interior walls to shore up the building.

General Contractor: Gray Purcell, Portland
Architect: Green Gables, Portland
Mechanical Contractor: Hunter Davisson, Portland
Electrical Contractor: Stoner Electric, Portland

Heilbronner Building

Renovation of this Hood River Building proves what goes around, comes around.

Before renovation it was a carousel museum. It still is.

The project included a seismic retrofit, which was much less complicated than expected, said Mike Purcell, owner of Gray Purcell Construction, Portland. . It turns that although the town of Hood River is close to Portland, it is in a different seismic zone and requires less bracing. "We added strapping and bracing to strengthen the building, but much of the interior restoration was completed by the building owner, Brad Perron," Purcell said.

The renovation kicked off a string of projects in Hood River for the company, which is now working on five buildings in the area.