28th Street Apartments

Description of the project

"The restoration and expansion of a landmark YMCA built in 1926 restores principal spaces, reconfigures original housing, and innovatively adds replacement units. The design re-establishes this building’s role as an important community focus and brings living quarters in compliance with contemporary standards.

This classic example of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, designed by noted architect Paul R. Williams (one of the first black architects), provided the African American community recreational space and accommodations in the 1920s but by 2007 had fallen into disrepair. We restored exterior and key historic features and enlarged housing units, which necessitated a new residential wing. Inventive integration of new building systems released the existing rooftop for use as a garden and social space to link the historic building to new construction.

The thin, cross-ventilated addition is shaded to the south by a vertical photovoltaic panel array and wrapped to the north with perforated metal screens that feather at the corners to frame views of the city." Such sustainable features makes the new YMCA building a candidate for LEED Gold certification.

KEA deftly played modern against vintage. The roof deck, a lounge that connects the new and old buildings, has a vermilion elastomeric surface—a riff on Williams's terra-cotta roof tiles. And the aluminum sunscreen that shades and visually dematerializes the new wing has a perforated pattern abstracted from the main entrance's 1920s bas-reliefs. The gymnasium has been refurbished, but to accommodate a residents' lounge the architects filled in the pool, leaving its outline and mosaic surrounds visible. Encapsulated in geo-textile and foam board beneath fill with a concrete cap, the pool could someday regain its original use.

KEA reinterpreted the building's original, and still much-needed, role. “It's not exactly adaptive reuse—it was housing then, and it's housing now,” says firm principal Julie Eizenberg. “You've got to respect what a huge story the place was for this community in its day. We definitely didn't want to lose that.”