Mattress factory reborn

The former mattress factory on upper Meeting Street had about as much pizzazz as any other inexpensively built 20th century industrial shell.

The first step toward changing that came five years ago with the new Arthur Ravenel Bridge, which created a new interstate on-ramp next door, markedly raising the building's visibility.

The second step came when the state Department of Transportation bought the long-vacant building and handed it to the city as a way of offsetting the bridge's negative impact on the surrounding neighborhood.

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Innovation Center

The nondescript warehouse-style building at Meeting Street and the new entrance to Interstate 26 was built in the 1940s to make mattresses. See how it's been transformed into Innovation Center, a series of high-tech laboratory and meeting spaces.

The third and final step took place over eight months last year, as the city worked with the S.C. Research Authority, the Medical University of South Carolina, JHS Architecture of Columbia and Choate Construction Co. to convert the 28,000-square-foot building into the Innovation Center, an incubator for start-up medical businesses.

Architect Derek Gruner of JHS says one challenge was to liven up the building's appearance, particularly its entrance.

While the nearby trolley barn has a dramatic look because of its larger size and natural brick, the only features worth noting on the mattress factory were its curving glass block entrance and its two sets of clerestory windows.

Michael Maher of the Charleston Civic Design Center worked with JHS as a sort of co-client. The city retains ownership of the building and paid for a new police substation and community meeting space inside it.

Gruner says Maher suggested drawing inspiration from the curved glass block section, a sort of low budget-Art Deco touch.

It's not an architectural style prevalent in Charleston, and Gruner says he studied up on it to come up with the design for the new lobby.

"That led to a sort of curving footprint and a lot of the signature art deco elements done in a contemporary way," Gruner says. "It's a rather enigmatic form, but that was the origin behind it."

The lobby has a late Art Deco-Art Moderne look with horizontal windows and walls, plus curving elements that define this mid-20th century style.

From Choate's viewpoint, the biggest challenge was to meet the requirements of the Innovation Center -- such as ventilation, new utilities and other changes -- while preserving the building's historical aesthetic.

The contractor was conscious of preserving the building's naturel features and lines, such as the exposed brick, steel trusses and hammered glass windows that were all original.

Needless to say, biotech start-ups have different needs than mid-20th century mattress manufacturing, and both the designer and contractor carefully had to weave new plumbing and mechanical systems through the building, cutting through the concrete floor to lay pipe and grappling with lower ceilings needed to cover new ducts and air hoods.

Perhaps the most dramatic step along these lines came when crews removed the building's two original massive ventilation fans -- each of which stretches 10 feet across and weighs about a ton -- then cleaned them, painted them and reinstalled them as decoration, a bit of slow moving kinetic sculpture.

"That was a nod to the integrity of the original building," Gruner says. "It didn't have air conditioning, and those fans allowed ventilation, and they allowed a lot of dust particles from the mattress process to escape out of the roof. Now it's almost metaphorical about a wheel running in people's heads. It goes back to innovation and the creations of new ideas."

Gruner says the adaptive use creates an intrigue that would be missing from a new building. "You know you're looking at something that's very genuine," he says, "and that just gives it a richness."

Robert Behre may be reached at 937-5771 or by fax at 937-5579. His e-mail address is rbehre@postandcourier.com, and his mailing address is 134 Columbus St., Charleston, SC 29403.