Preservation easements are great for culture, but necessitate creative problem solving.
The building’s previous owner, a woman’s art collective, utilized a state historic grant to preserve the rotunda’s elegant and character defining roof structure, for which I am daily thankful. This came, however, with a 30 year historic preservation easement, which my very thorough attorney discovered three days before closing. Fortunately I was already planning on renovating according to the standards, which I guess makes me the right owner for the right time.
Now my familiarity with the state’s historic preservation standards, from my ongoing client work in historic industrial rehabilitations didn’t exactly make this simple, per se.
Window Replacement: We had to replace existing, non-closing steel windows with double-pane aluminum replicas, which required thorough documentation of the existing glazing widths and configuration— and then just as thorough shop drawing review prior to fabrication.
Repointing between Bricks: Time, and previous owners, had done a number on the mortar between the courses of the triple-wythe bricks walls. While white lime mortar would have been originally used for this, we had to mix some additional portland cement with white mortar to create a tone in-line with the existing mortar’s aging process.
Roof Profile: In order to maintain the character defining brick surfaces, for many of these spaces the roof is the only location to add meaningful insulation. The details must be carefully considered, so as not to make the building fascia significantly larger, and throwing off a key proportion. Using tapered insulation around the edges at roof overhangs, and studying the proportion of shadow boards can help create the desired composition.
