Old Gas Plant - Merit Award Winner
AIA Richmond Chapter 2008 Design Awards
Name: Old Gas Plant
Location: Fredericksburg, Virginia
Architect: Beyond Ordinary Boundaries Architecture; Richmond, Virginia
Owner: The Thomas J. Wack Company
Completed: 2007
Project Cost: $ 950,000
Project Narrative:
The City Gas Works, one of the oldest civic structures in Fredericksburg, was built in three phases. The original portion consists of the 20 foot tall West Hall and two shorter wings, the South Wing and West Wing. The tall East Hall was added in 1911, and the East Addition, boiler room and South Addition were added in 1927. A large round chimney abuts the northeast corner of the East Hall. The single story structure contained 4,660 square feet.
By 2003, the historic structure had sat vacant for approximately three decades. The Architect was asked to provide complete rehabilitation of the existing building while incorporating new interior office space. In order to accommodate the owner’s spatial needs, a second level “mezzanine” type structure was added to increase the usable square footage. This provided a total of 6,110 sf finish area. The structure for the mezzanine would be of steel columns and beams left exposed to differentiate the new structure from the massive existing brick walls.
All work was performed in accordance with the Secretary of the Interior’s Guidelines for Historic Rehabilitation and was subject to design review per the Department of Historic Resources and the City of Fredericksburg Architecture Review Board. The dialogue between old and new was made clear through use of modern materials balancing the rehabilitation of the original structures. Clarity of purpose and detail reinforces the functional nature of a building created as a machine to serve the City.
Evidence the new machine.
Jury Comments:
“There are clearly very careful decisions that have been made about what to keep and what to discard in this adaptive reuse project. The project retains the character of the original structure; the designer was able to add and subtract without losing the reading of the original building. The inner room is beautiful. This is an interesting sustainable project making very interesting use of materials.”
