Four Ways to Repair Historic Building Damage
And What to Do When You Can’t Salvage a Historic Property
Historic 2nd Avenue, Nashville, TN, 2021
Historic buildings are particularly susceptible to damage and dilapidation. Whether facing damage due to neglect, an emergency, or a natural disaster, there are many ways you can respond to a broken building. Repair, reconstruction, adaptive reuse, rehabilitation—the list goes on.
Below we will explore six ways you can repair a historic building—and what to do in situations when repair may not be possible.
Top Causes of Building Damage
Building damage comes in many forms and can be attributed to a variety of causes. Based on our experience, the most common causes of building damage include:
Weather and Non-Weather-Related Water Building Damage
If we had to identify a top offender for building damage, it would be water. Whether related to a weather event like flooding or freezing, a lack of maintenance, or an inexplicable emergency, when water enters a building in a way that is not intended by the building’s construction, break down occurs.
Water intrusion may be traced back to a burst pipe, failing exterior vapor barrier, negative air pressure, or sewer back up. In any case, water loss in a building can lead to mold, corrosion, and contamination. We’ll talk more about this in a future blog.
Storm Building Damage
Severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, tropical storms, and more can also wreak havoc on a building. Damage is typically connected to wind or hail but can also include fire and electrical issues related to lightening.
Structural Building Damage
Over time and potentially due to a lack of proper maintenance, structural issues in a building will naturally occur. These largely center around shifts in a building’s foundation. In areas along fault lines, structural damage can also be caused by seismic activity.
Criminal Building Damage
Damage can additionally occur in a building due to intentional criminal acts including theft, vandalism, trespassing, and other actions. Particularly in buildings which have been abandoned or neglected, it is possible for “squatters” to take up residence and leave damages behind.
In GHP’s own national headquarters building—located in a historic building—we can still see a burn mark in our office’s floor where a suspected squatter reportedly set a fire in the building prior to our ownership and occupancy. Now, the mark is part of our building’s history, but most inflicted building damage takes away from rather than adds to the story of a historic building.
What Can I Do to Prevent or Minimize Building Damage?
Conduct Routine Building Maintenance Inspections
The below warning signs in a building can often signal structural issues or other damage:
Cracks in walls, molding, steps, and other building materials
Diagonal cracks that start at the top corners of window and doors and extend to the ceiling
Sticking windows
Pooling or leaking water, condensation, or vapor, particularly near a building’s foundation
Discoloration in building materials
Atypical odors
Gaps in the roof or between walls and ceilings
Poor drainage
Uneven floors
Mold which indicates the presence of unwanted moisture
Dry rot
If near salt water, keep a special eye out for corrosion
Keep a Building Occupied
Buildings which are unoccupied or abandoned deteriorate at a much faster rate than occupied buildings.
Because aging, unoccupied structures do not often bring in revenue, owners are understandably tempted to reduce or eliminate maintenance to offset costs. This lack of maintenance could lead to costly repairs down the road.
Finding a way for a historic building to remain occupied, produce revenue, and be regularly maintained can be key to staving off preventable repairs down the road.
Create a Storm Preparation Plan
If your historic building is located in an area susceptible to storms, develop procedures to minimize damage. These precautions include surveying your building for areas that are particularly at risk for damage by high winds and water.
Inspect your roof and prioritize any repairs. Remove any obstructions from gutters, drains, and storm drains to prevent blockage. Reduce windborne debris by keeping trees trimmed and avoiding easily windborne materials such as gravel. If you live in a coastal area, you may want to additionally invest in storm shutters. For flood zones, place sandbags at low points of your property and door thresholds during storm warnings—also look into insulating critical systems such as your building’s electrical and mechanical systems and fire pump.
Create an Emergency Response Plan
When an emergency strikes—a pipe bursts, a toilet overflows, a tornado hits—it is critical to have a response plan.
At the heart of this plan is knowing who to call for what type of building damage. This action plan can save you valuable response time. Some of the top contacts you will want to include are:
For emergency environmental services, water intrusion, or other hazards, call an industrial hygienist and/or environmental services team with a quick response record.
For structural damage, call a trusted structural engineer.
For mechanical, electrical, and/or plumbing (MEP) damage, call a trusted MEP engineer. MEP engineers often also handle fire protection systems.
For public safety, call local law enforcement.
For historic buildings, make sure you involve in any renovation and repair plans the historic commissions and agencies that have jurisdiction. Often, historic buildings require special cleaning or repair techniques to preserve building integrity.
If you want a one-stop-shop contact, call an architect who offers project and/or program management services. They will help you engage and manage all necessary sub-consultants, including engaging with engineers, historic commissions, and relevant authorities.
Four Ways to Approach Historic Building Damage
For historic buildings, there are four primary treatment methods which have been established by the U.S. Department of the Interior in their “Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties.”
These standards are required only for federally funded historic projects but otherwise serve as a general guide and support for how to work with historic buildings.
Your choice of approach depends on a variety of factors, including the extent of your building’s damage, historic significance, proposed use, and code requirements.
Often, a building will require a combination of more than one of the below approaches. Every building is unique, and it is a good idea to partner with a knowledgeable architect to help you understand which approach(es) are right for your building and needs.
1. Historic Building Restoration
According to the U.S. National Park Service, restoration “depicts a property at a particular period while removing evidence of other [time] periods.”
Essentially, you are returning a building to its original appearance—or its appearance in another particularly significant point in time.
While restoration services are most common in historic buildings, restoration projects are also possible for modern buildings. Restoration projects can include replacing fixtures with original replicas, reverting post-original construction renovations through reconstruction, repairing holes in walls, refinishing wood floors, and more.
Restoration may also involve the limited and sensitive upgrade of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems and other code-required work to make properties functional.
If your goal is to repair your building so that it looks like the original structure, restoration is the right approach for you. However, you may still need to perform some renovations and remodels if parts of your building are not able to be fully restored. An architect and their team of expert sub-consultants can help you determine how best to navigate a restoration project.
Restoration project steps include:
Identifying original historic building materials and features to be restored
Protecting and maintaining those historic materials and features with the least degree of intervention possible
For repairable deteriorated and damaged materials, repairing them by “stabilizing, consolidating, and conserving materials”
For extensively damaged original historic features, replacing them may be appropriate. Use historic documentation as a model for the replacement.
Removing existing features from time periods other than the target historic period
Meeting ADA, life safety, sustainability, and code requirements for the building in the most sensitive way possible
Recreating significant original historic building features, such as a porch. The recreation should follow historic documentation. If historic documentation is not available, then rehabilitation may be a better project approach for you.
2. Historic Building Preservation
Preservation is defined as “applying measurers necessary to sustain the existing form, integrity, and materials of a historic property,” according to the U.S. Department of Interior. Preservation work is generally focused on the maintenance and repair of original historic materials rather than their replacement or reconstruction.
Preservation may involve limited and sensitive upgrades of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems and other code-required work to make properties functional. However, new exterior additions are not within the scope of a preservation project.
The ultimate goal with a preservation project is to retain the greatest amount of a building’s original historic fabric and form.
Preservation project steps include:
Identifying historic materials and features to be preserved
Protect and maintain historic materials, using the least degree of intervention possible
For repairable deteriorated and damaged materials, repairing them by “stabilizing, consolidating, and conserving materials”
For extensively damaged original historic features, replacement may be appropriate. The replacement material should match the original material physically and visually (for example, replace wood with wood, masonry with masonry, etc.). Only with hidden structural reinforcements (such as steel rods) should substitute materials be used. If a building’s core features are missing or damaged, rehabilitation or restoration would be a better approach.
Meeting ADA, life safety, sustainability, and code requirements for the building in the most sensitive way possible
3. Historic Reconstruction
The U.S. Department of Interior’s standards define reconstruction as “depicting, by means of new construction, the form, features, and detailing of a non-surviving...building, structure, or object for the purpose of replicating its appearance at a specific period of time and in its historic location.”
Reconstruction is typically pursued when there are no visible or viable remaining historic materials or only a building foundation remains.
Like the restoration treatment method, reconstruction involves recreating a historic building as it appeared in its most significant time period in history.
Because it is often difficult to have enough historic documentation to guide the accurate reconstruction of an entire historic building, this method is the least frequently undertaken historic building treatment. Reconstruction is only considered if you have enough historic documentation to base your designs.
It is possible to only reconstruct the exterior of a historic building, opting for a simple interior design. If your project is federally funded, signage will be required that indicates which parts of your building are reconstructions.
Reconstruction project steps include:
Researching and documenting your building’s historic significance—is your building’s reconstruction essential to the public’s understanding and experience of the property? Do you have enough historic evidence to guide reconstruction?
Investigating archeological resources to identify any remaining historic features
Identifying, protecting, and preserving those existing historic features
Reconstructing non-surviving elements of the building utilizing original or compatible materials
Meeting ADA, life safety, sustainability, and code requirements for the building in the most sensitive way possible
4. Historic Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation is defined by the U.S. Department of Interior as “making possible a compatible use for a property through repair, alterations, and additions while preserving those portions or features which convey its historical, cultural, or architectural values.”
Rehabilitation allows the alteration of a historic building to fulfill new needs and new uses while retaining the building’s historic character. Of these four treatments, only rehabilitation allows alterations and new additions to the building in order to support a building’s use.
Historic rehabilitation—also known as “adaptive reuse”—has become one of the most popular historic building treatments among GHP’s clients. It equips building owners to protect the historic character of their buildings while giving structures new life and new purpose in the modern age.
Rehabilitation project steps include:
Identifying, retaining, and preserving character-defining historic materials and features
Protecting and maintaining historic materials and features that can be preserved
Repairing damaged historic materials and features
Replacing character-defining historic materials and features that have deteriorated or are severely damaged, matching physical or historic documentation
Historic materials and features that are not character-defining may not need to be replaced or repaired. In this case, if not enough historic information is available for an accurate reconstruction, you may want to design a new feature that is compatible with the overall historic character of the building.
Interior and exterior alterations should not drastically change character-defining features of the building
Meeting ADA, life safety, sustainability, and code requirements for the building in the most sensitive way possible
What to Do When Your Historic Building Can’t Be Repaired?
While the above four historic building treatments are solid guides for historic architecture and historic building damage, there are exceptional circumstances that do not fit the mold.
Damage can come in many forms, and you may be left with a historic building that cannot be safely repaired or accurately reconstructed. Or perhaps it can be reconstructed, but you would prefer to rebuild in a way that pays homage to your site’s historic roots while incorporating modern elements and meeting modern needs.
This is when you need to call an architect. They will assemble a team of experts to determine if your building is structurally sound, what materials and elements can be saved and repurposed, and how the site can be reimagined to honor its history while achieving your vision for the future.
A Case Study: Second Avenue Historic District, Nashville, TN
On Christmas Day 2020, Nashville, TN’s historic building district on Second Avenue experienced an unprecedented level of damage.
At 6:30 AM, a bomb exploded, severely damaging 65 buildings and displacing hundreds of people. With the media attention of the nation, Nashville Mayor John Cooper called in GHP to manage response and recovery efforts.
Working closely with government agencies and Metro Nashville’s Historical Commission, GHP’s team assessed the damage of each building, helped owners determine the best treatment paths, and salvaged historic bricks, copper, and other building materials for the rebuild.
Sustaining an extensive amount of structural damage, for buildings that could not be saved, GHP worked with stakeholders to reimagine those historic properties. The resulting vision has laid the framework for a vibrant pedestrian streetscape and riverfront that honors and elevates the historic district.
Check out the case study of this project here.
