Soybean countertops, solar panels, and skylights save energy—and aging buildings.

Story from the archives by Alex Hawes / Oct. 17, 2003

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Nike European Headquarters, the Netherlands (William McDonough + Partners)

On a spring day two years ago, more than 75 building professionals gathered in Arlington National Cemetery seeking a truce but prepared for a fight.

The combatants, members of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the American Institute of Architects, were attending a symposium that explored the field of green design. This architectural philosophy, which first sprouted in the 1970s, strives to minimize buildings' resource and energy needs by using recycled or renewable building materials, solar power, and water efficiency. The battle at hand: Can historic preservation be squared with environmentally friendly buildings? The sides appeared evenly matched.

At one point in the meeting, during a discussion of windows, an attendee proclaimed that environmentalists could rip the drafty wood windows out of her historic building "over her dead body." Prospects for peace appeared dim, said Carl Elefante, an architect with Quinn Evans who attended the symposium, until the subject was examined more closely. Simply discarding old windows did not present the most eco-friendly solution, participants realized, but enhancing the thermal efficiency of existing windows did. Common ground soon spread to other areas.

"Preservationists saw examples of green adaptations that worked well within their historic fabric and context," Elefante says. "Environmentalists saw that historic buildings were able to accommodate state-of-the-art green materials and technologies, just like modern buildings, while preserving our beloved cities and towns."

Though the most prominent examples of green design, such as the Condé Nast Building at Four Times Square and Nike European Headquarters in The Netherlands, are new structures, the green revolution is spreading to historic landmarks—and for good reason. Building debris accounts for an estimated 40 percent of refuse in the nation's landfills. Simply put, restoring an aging building is better for the environment than erecting one from scratch.

"People are beginning to realize there's a profound overlap between sustainable design and historic preservation," says Russell Perry, managing partner of William McDonough and Partners of Charlottesville, Va. Engineers use the term "embodied energy" to denote the sum total of all the resource requirements of a new structure, from the mining and extraction of building materials to their fabrication and transportation to the building site. Extending the life of these materials gradually pays back on the structure's energy debt.

"Think of the Rotunda at the University of Virginia," says Perry. "The bricks that went into making it were either sun-dried or cured in wood-fired kilns. Today you'd be using some kind of petrochemical fuel to make that same brick. Instead of making it within 10 miles of the site, you'd be driving it from Georgia or Minnesota, again using significantly more energy. That kind of profligate use of energy was not an option 250 years ago."

Nike's airy atrium (William McDonough + Partners)

William McDonough and Partners and Quinn Evans Architects jointly tackled one landmark preservation project recently: the renovation of the S.T. Dana Building at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Home to the university's School of Natural Resources and Environment, this classical revival structure had run up against the limits of its 95-year-old body.

The school wanted the renovation to reflect the department's philosophy of sustainability, so Dana now boasts some of the latest innovations in green design: flooring made of recycled truck tires and bamboo (a short-rotation grass that regenerates much faster than wood pulp), newsprint-and-soybean-composite countertops, sunflower-hull shelving, and recycled glass tiling. The building's new chilled-ceiling technology—which radiates cooling the way traditional radiators radiate heat—uses about 10 percent less energy than even the most efficient forced-air systems, says Elefante.

The renovation, scheduled for completion in late 2002, has also preserved Dana's historic integrity. Scraping layers of cheap (and likely toxic) paint off old doors revealed gorgeous ash wood. Elefante estimates they saved 350 tanker truckloads of fuel by salvaging the building's brick facade rather than firing new bricks.

A host of other conservation-minded organizations—including the Environmental Defense, the National Audubon Society, the World Resources Institute, and the National Wildlife Federation—now sport green headquarters. Pitching sustainability to commercial clients is tough, however.

REI, Denver (Robert Pisano)

When Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) scouted Denver locations for its flagship store, it found the 1901 Denver Tramway Power Company Building occupying the most appealing location along the banks of the South Platte River. Once the tallest edifice in Denver, the late-Victorian, Richardson-Romanesque facility burned coal to fuel the city's trolley system until 1950. In 1968, the Forney Transportation Museum purchased the site. But the museum never had sufficient funding to conquer asbestos and lead paint contamination, water damage, and other deterioration in the 90,000-square-foot plant. In 1998, the Tramway Building was put up for sale again. Erecting a new structure on the site would have been cheaper for REI. As encouragement to preserve the landmark rather than tear it down, the company received a $415,000 grant from the Colorado Historical Society, $6.3 million in tax incentives from the Denver Urban Renewal Authority, and tax credits for 20 percent of construction costs from the U.S. Department of Interior. Inside REI (Robert Pisano)

Mithun Architects + Designers + Planners of Seattle led the two-year renovation of the Tramway Building. Historic wood windows were salvaged and, along with large skylights installed in the renovated roof, allow ambient lights to be turned off during the day. Masons tuck-pointed nearly two million red bricks and recovered Colorado sandstone from the foundations of an old viaduct for use in a fireplace. Capitalizing on Denver's arid climate, an efficient evaporative cooling system saves further energy and money.

In October 2001, the Denver Tramway Power Plant Building renovation earned REI a 2001 National Preservation Honor Award from the National Trust. "REI could have built a sprawling new facility, but it chose to honor this piece of Denver's past instead," said Trust President Richard Moe. REI has also applied for a listing of the building in the National Register of Historic Places.

No sustainable preservation project of this sort is achieved without sacrifice and compromise, of course. "Sometimes the energy side might win, and other times the historic side needs to win," says Mithun architect Bert Gregory.

But the twin movements of historic preservation and environmental conservation may finally be reconciling their differences, a reunion nearly 40 years in the making. The demolition of New York City's old Penn Station in October 1963, which helped spark the preservation movement, occurred only six months after CBS aired a documentary that brought Rachel Carson's Silent Spring—and environmentalism—into the national consciousness. The movements matured apart, but their members still speak a common language.

"There was a loud rallying cry," says Elefante, speaking for both causes. "We're not adding to the world, we're subtracting from the world."

Alex Hawes is an environmental writer who lives in Arizona.

This story was originally published in Preservation Online on Nov. 27, 2001. Read more stories of the week in our archives >>

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