Building Design + Construction’s 35th annual Reconstruction Awards honor 21 projects for standing out as the best in renovation, preservation, and adaptive reuse work.

For the 2018 Reconstruction Awards, BD+C awarded two Platinum awards, five Gold awards, four Silver awards, five bronze awards, and five honorable mentions. The projects ranged in use from music halls and libraries to union headquarters and mixed-use developments.

Each award-winning project is listed below. For more information about each, click on the project’s name or image.

Platinum

Cincinnati Music Hall: Saving a cultural anchor

Cincinnati, Ohio

Four years ago, Cincinnati Music Hall had the dubious distinction of being placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s “Endangered Historic Places” list.

Crosstown Concourse: An 'organic' urban village

Memphis, Tenn.

In the 1920s sears, roebuck & Co. went on a spree constructing regional distribution centers the length and breadth of the country, from Boston to Chicago, from Dallas to Los Angeles.

Gold

National Arts Centre: O, Canada

Ottawa, Ont.

The national arts centre is the jewel in Canada’s cultural crown. Designed by Fred Lebensold (1917-1985) and completed in 1969 as one of Canada’s Centennial projects, it is a key component of Ottawa’s Confederation Square National Historic Site.

Charles L. Tutt Library, Colorado College: Net-zero in the Rockies

Colorado Springs, Colo.

The expansion of colorado college’s Tutt Library doubled its size to 94,000 sf, making it likely to be named the nation’s largest 24/7 net-zero academic library. The project reinforces the college’s commitment to achieving campus-wide carbon neutrality by 2020.

Mass MoCA Building 6: The Robert W. Wilson Building

North Adams, Mass.

The Arnold Print works, a textile-dyeing mill in North Adams, Mass., dates to the 1860s. In 1942, it was converted to make electrical parts for the war effort. It closed in 1986.

Weiser Hall, University of Michigan: Campus upgrade

Ann Arbor, Mich.

The renovation of Weiser Hall, a Mid-century academic building at the University of Michigan, provides new daylit spaces, community clusters, greater accessibility, and sustainable design features. The building had been mostly vacant since 2014, when the astronomy department moved out.

Kehoe Iron Works: Industrial strength makeover

Savannah, Ga.

The kehoe iron works occupies a 6.3-acre site on the Savannah River, in the Savannah National Historic Landmark District. Built in 1873 and 1902 and closed in 1930, it was acquired by the Savannah Gas Company in the 1940s; it later sat unused for 28 years.

SIlver

Wiseburn High School: New kind of P3

El Segundo, Calif.

The adaptive reuse of a 330,000-sf, four-story Northrup Grumman engineering office building in El Segundo, Calif., has yielded three independent charter schools with 72 classrooms that serve 1,350 students.

Yarn works: Neverending yarn

Fitchburg, Mass.

Bedford Square: Revivifying urbanity

Westport. Conn.

When the local YMCA decided to move out of the historic Bedford Building and adjacent firehouse in Westport, Conn., Bedford Square Associates purchased the property and an adjacent lot to create a 1½-acre site for a 110,000-sf complex.

Bronze

20 Times Square: Conquering Times Square

New York, N.Y.

No other place in the country generates more advertising revenue from building façades than Times Square. A single billboard can command upwards of $4 million per advertiser per year. Using the latest digital signage technology and creative building redevelopment plans, building owners and developers jockey for the primo positions to capture eyeballs along this famed commercial intersection.

700 Constitution: Healthy living

Washington, D.C.

Two decades is a long time for a hospital to sit, unused, with no future. Yet, there sat the 1920s-era hospital building in the heart of Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Until an enterprising development team, led by Urban Structures, Borger Management, and Ronald D. Paul Companies, proposed an unusual plan to convert the 140,000-sf, four-story hospital into a luxury apartment building. As wild as it sounds, the $45 million plan worked, and the building’s first residents moved in early last year.

5 Beekman Hotel and Residences: Back in business

New York, N.Y.

When it opened in 1883, the nine-story Temple Court Building was one of the tallest buildings in New York City, and one of the first with a soaring, open atrium at its center. The red-brick and terra cotta office building was commissioned by dry-goods retailer and banker Eugene Kelly to house law practices. Its signature turrets were trendsetting at the time—the Woolworth Building adopted similar architectural elements some 30 years later.

Hawaiian Dredging Construction Company Building: GC to the rescue

Honolulu, Hawaii

Once home to the Honolulu Advertiser—the city’s largest daily—this 1929 Beaux Arts–style building has been a landmark in Honolulu’s Kakaako neighborhood for nearly 90 years. The three-story structure features a distinctive mint-green terra cotta exterior, Spanish-tile hipped roof, and twin roof towers. It is listed on both the National Register and the State Register of Historic Places.

Elgin Tower: Elgin's heart beats again

Elgin, Ill.

Completed in May 1929 as the headquarters for Home National Bank and Home National Savings and Trust, the 15-story Elgin Tower has had a tumultuous history. The Crash of ’29 forced the savings institution to declare bankruptcy. From that point on, the Art Deco building housed a wide range of owners and tenants, from Walgreens to the Elgin National Watch Company. Other than a short stint of prosperity in the late 1940s, the tower never achieved its promise as the city’s landmark commercial building.

Honorable Mentions

Battle Street Brewery: Back on track

Dansville, N.Y.

For more than 30 years, the Dansville-Mount Morris Railroad (D&MM) train depot sat abandoned, slowly rotting, in the heart of this Western New York town of 5,300. The building served as a commercial stop for 90 years for this short-line railroad, which still operates today as part of the Rochester and Southern Railroad.

University Commons, Millikin University: Millikin's new 'front door'

Decatur, Ill.

At five stories and 87,000 sf, the University Commons is the largest project in the 117-year history of Millikin University. It is also its most important building.

Promedica Headquarters Steam Plant: Toledo treasure

Toledo, Ohio

Designed by Daniel Burnham in the mid-1890s, the Toledo Edison Water Street Station dutifully served this northern Ohio city for more than eight decades, initially as a power plant, then as a steam plant. In the early 1980s, when advances in HVAC technology made steam heat obsolete, the city closed the plant for good. There the building sat for 30 years, boarded up and decaying—a blight on the banks of the Maumee River.

Wende Museum of the Cold War: Armory Lives on

Culver City, Calif.

The story of the Wende Museum is one of grit and determination on the part of the project team, city leaders, and the community. An adaptive reuse of an abandoned national guard armory, the project involved years of fundraising, donations, and pro bono services to make this non-profit museum a reality. Numerous product manufacturers donated materials and systems (roofing, waterproofing, lighting, HVAC), and all major subcontractors gifted time or materials for the cause.