Renovation gives 1915 building another use

Over the past 97 years, the modest building at 20 Elizabeth St. has had almost as many lives as a cat.

It's been a fellowship hall, a singing club, a musician's hall, a prenatal care center, a costume shop and now an architect's office.

And as of last week, it's also a Carolopolis Award winner.

The Preservation Society of Charleston recently recognized Dufford Young Architects for the renovation of its new office. The project was one of 13 new buildings, renovations and restorations so honored.

The Elizabeth Street building is rather unusual. From the street, the woodframe building looks like an arts-and-crafts-era home, a bungalow minus the veranda. Only those who enter discover its lack of interior walls.

That cavernous interior also is the very feature that posed the greatest challenge for architects John Young and Philip Dufford, not to mention their structural engineer, Russell Rosen.

As the building's uses changed during the past century, the roof settled, taking on a sort of saddle shape.

One exterior wall was pushed out 6 inches from plumb. A previous effort to bolster the roof no longer was working --and it also lowered the ceiling's peak height from about 16 feet to 14 feet.

"It turned out it was just one Band-Aid after another," Young said.

With Rosen's supervision, the renovation work pulled in the building's sides, jacked up its ridge and stabilized the original rafters -- while removing about half of the dozen metal tie rods that helped hold it together.

Essentially, the roof was rebuilt from the ground up.

The plaster on the side walls was damaged, so it was removed and replaced with plywood sheathing under Sheetrock.

Inside, Dufford and Young designed interior partitions that give them a small conference room and two private offices but that don't do much to reduce the historical volume of the room. In fact, the partition wall actually provides more structural support.

The other major change involved rebuilding the front entrance: removing the concrete stair and replacing it with a new wooden stair, with handrails and columns that matched the original, damaged ones.

Despite all its uses, the building survived more or less intact. Young said they had a "happy surprise" when they found most of the original wood floor underneath sheets of plywood.

"We couldn't find any openings that had been moved or changed," Dufford added, "which is interesting because there's a rhythm of windows down each side, and they're not the same."

Both architects note that their clients seem to pay them more frequent visits now that they're in their new location, which is more than double the size of their previous downtown office.

"People just like to be in this space," Dufford said.

The other Carolopolis Award winners include several high-profile projects I've already written about, including the College of Charleston's Randolph Hall, Towell Library and Porter's Lodge, 66 George St.; First Scots Presbyterian Church's new fellowship hall, 53 Meeting St.; Dock Street Theatre, 135 Church St.; Charleston City Market, 188 Meeting St.; and the Seashore Farmers Lodge on James Island.

Awards also were given to the properties at 74 and 76 Queen St., 74 Church St., 93 Broad St., 31 Parkwood St., 463 Huger St., 337 Sumter St. and 479 King St.