Historic York Hotel's facade taken apart brick by brick
It will be incorporated into The Bow
Kim Guttormson, Calgary Herald
Published: Monday, June 18, 2007
The York Hotel will start disappearing this week -- the careful removal of every brick being the first step in preserving the building's facade.
As part of The Bow development, the 78-year-old hotel will become the cornerstone of a complex housing retail and cultural space on the south side of 6th Avenue S.E.
But first, specialized crews will dismantle what was billed as the city's first "modern hotel" so that a 20-metre pit can be dug for a parkade. Eventually, two of the hotel's exterior walls will be resurrected around a new structure.
"People may look and think, my God, we're destroying it," said David Jefferies, with Zeidler Partnership Architects, "but this is how we're saving it."
By 2011, the two blocks straddling the corners of 6th Avenue and Centre Street will be reinvented. The Bow -- a 58-storey, Norman Foster-designed office tower that will house EnCana's head office -- will dominate the north block.
A smaller, seven-storey complex will be built to the south. Heritage advocates are pleased the York is being incorporated into the plan, with its facade flowing into a more modern structure, giving the impression of two separate buildings side by side.
However, the York building isn't structurally sound, and the interior has been renovated so often it no longer has historic significance.
As well, the floors couldn't hold the weight that retail or cultural space will demand.
The York's real value, said city heritage planner Darryl Cariou, is its south and west facades and the concrete friezes that run in a strip near the base and along the roof, and those will all be saved.
"The primary heritage of the buildings are in the facades and friezes, and those are certainly being preserved. It's one of very few examples of this style of building, the art deco flavour to it," he said.
The other two walls are made of a different, cheaper brick and don't have friezes, because they originally stood alongside another building and faced the back lane.
The York is also important because it anchors a block of heritage buildings along 7th Avenue S., including the Legion, built in 1922, and the 1913 St. Regis Hotel.
Jefferies said it's also important to preserve the York because of its history -- it housed CFCN radio in its heyday.
Preserving the building presents some unique challenges, in part because of the materials of which it's made. The bricks, for example, are soft, constructed from lime mortar. And, Jefferies said, many are water damaged, making it likely some won't survive the move.
Each brick will be removed, its condition analyzed and then stored on pallets that indicate which part of the wall they came from.
The plan is to have new bricks built from the same type of clay, even though the original quarry is no longer in operation, and then use both in the new walls.
"It's like a giant 3-D puzzle," Richard Tucker, vice-president of development for Matthews Southwest, said of putting the pieces back together.
The colourful concrete friezes present another problem. While a typical frieze is a piece of carved art attached to the building, these are actually part of the building.
Jefferies said that when the York was built in 1929, as they were pouring the concrete for the roof, they also poured it into moulds for the design across the top of the building. So far, he's only confirmed two other buildings in North America using that method to create a frieze -- a theatre in Los Angeles and one in Denver. It is fitting, Jefferies said, because the man who designed the friezes worked for a Hollywood film studio as a graphic artist.
The method used means the friezes -- with their fiddleheads and fronds and cogs that Jefferies thinks are film reels -- can't just be detached. Crews will now saw them off, trying to cut along existing cracks.
Jefferies said there is a chance the friezes won't survive removal attempts. So rubber moulds are being taken as a precaution against catastrophe, allowing the design to be exactly duplicated if need be.
Detailed evidence documenting the building's appearance -- including a laser survey and photos -- has been compiled so it can be recreated. However, one thing will change. There will be an arcade, similar to the Bay's at street level, so there is better pedestrian access to the building.
Paint chips have been analyzed to determine the original colour of the friezes -- paler than the hues now in use, Jefferies said.
"Many people say 'why are you saving the York?' " said the architect, who spent months researching the building's history. "The hidden history and unforeseen uniqueness is what makes it really worth it."
The city's Cariou said that while the York is less than 80 years old, it doesn't mean it's not historic. "This is our history. If we don't keep it, it will never be really old."
kguttormson@theherald.canwest.com
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