The Meredith and Covey project featured the restoration of two historic apartment buildings’ facades under unique circumstances and heavy damage. The research included in the process led us to a deeper understanding of historic materials common in our city’s landscape, and led to fully accurate restorations of the aged building elements.
The Meredith apartments, built in 1909, and the Covey, built in 1913, are both a part of a boom of apartment buildings constructed in Salt Lake City between 1904 and World War I aiming to provide housing for the fast-growing urban population. They sit at the boundary between downtown and the historic Avenues neighborhood, surrounded by other historic residential projects, late 19th century mansions, and the Cathedral of the Madeleine, making the Lower Avenues one of the most history-dense ares of the entire city.
The warehouse adjacent to the Meredith and Covey buildings wasn’t draining properly, which eventually led to the roof imploding and brick walls exploding, shooting large chunks of brick and stone into the neighboring buildings. The unique damage that this caused looked as if the buildings had been shot, with large chunks missing and damaged in numerous spots. Luckily the structures remained unharmed, so in this project we were able to focus our efforts on understanding the original state of the facades and working to restore them.
To understand the original state of the facades, we documented and diagrammed every inch of the facades as they were before the damage, taking note of each are that would need to be repaired and understanding how the damaged areas fit within the facade as a whole. Our detailed drawings were useful construction documents, but also became in-depth historical records detailing the original building features.
The restoration included brick, windows, and wooden stairs, so an understanding of the original form of each of these different objects and the characteristics of their materials was necessary. We weren’t aiming to reinvent any part of the buildings, but rather to research, understand, and meticulously restore each piece to its original state. This process taught our team valuable lessons on historic preservation, facade detailing and damage repair.
