Renaissance Arts Hotel, New Orleans

The building located at 700 Tchoupitoulas is a four-story brick and reinforced concrete structure that occupies an entire city block in the heart of the New Orleans' historic Warehouse District. The 150,000-sq.-ft. building was originally designed for H. T. Cottam by the commercial design firm of Stone Bros. for use as a wholesale grocery warehouse.

Completed in 1910, the building is believed to be the first reinforced concrete building built in New Orleans.

The building appears to be rectangular in elevation but is actually a parallelogram with unequal length sides in plan, following the layout of the surrounding streets. The building structure is reinforced concrete, supported at the exterior by masonry columns.

The edges of the concrete slabs are turned down beams and act as concrete lintels to support the brick spandrels between the masonry columns. The design allows large areas of the façade to be devoted to windows, allowing lighting and ventilation of the building interior.

The National Park Service classified the Cottam warehouse as a building with national historic significance, which mandated the adherence to a strict regimen of historic renovation/restoration design and construction techniques.

Restoration guidelines dictated what was acceptable in the design and renovation/restoration of the Renaissance Arts Hotel. These included 100 percent tuck-pointing and repair of the exterior brick façade and rebuilding and restoring of the concrete spandrels, which support the brick façade. Additionally, the new replacement windows required significant attention to detail in the design and replication of the original size and style of frame to replicate the original sight lines.

The unifying theme in the design of the Arts Hotel - the dual atriums in the center of the building - is also one of the more significant constructability issues that were overcome. The second, third, fourth and roof levels had 24,000 sq. ft. of concrete slab and columns removed from the middle of the building. These areas were then re-shored, supported and in-filled with structural steel and concrete decks to accommodate the 40-ft. by 120-ft. skylights, interior crossover bridge, hospitality suite space, meeting rooms and the added loads of the rooftop swimming pool, hot tub and exercise room.

The original dock height first floor slab and fill was also removed and lowered to create more ceiling height for the hotel lobby requirements.

The historic restoration and newly updated building code requirements also presented a difficult challenge to overcome - the requirement for missile impact resistant glass. Although there were no historically accurate missile impact resistant windows on the market, the design and construction team was able to meet these requirements with the help of a cooperative vendor.