History in the Making
Converting landmark buildings to restaurants is enticing but daunting
By Scott Hume, Executive Managing Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 9/15/2004
This is beyond a labor of love; it’s a labor of madness,” Alan Stillman says with a weary laugh.
The chairman and CEO of The Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group is talking about the many months and many millions of dollars his New York City-based company has devoted to converting Boston’s Armory of the First Corps of Cadets to a Smith & Wollensky steakhouse. Set to open this month, the 450-seat operation, located in Boston’s Back Bay, “is going to be one of the great restaurants in the United States. People are going to look at it with amazement,” Stillman predicts.
He and others who have been effecting the transformation view the task with equal parts awe and exhaustion. Built in the 1890s as training space for the First Corps of Cadets (a military unit established in 1741 as bodyguards for the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony), the imposing granite Romanesque structure known locally as “The Castle” has been empty and shuttered for half a century. Lacking modern utilities (from electricity to sewer connections), the four-story, 18,000-square-foot structure—listed in the National Register of Historic Places—has been a lovely-to-look-at albatross for Boston.
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Stillman saw in the structure possibilities for creating a restaurant with unrivaled ambience. “All our restaurants are different. We don’t build boxes,” he says. “But this was really different. This has to operate as a steakhouse and look and feel like a castle. You couldn’t look at it and say, ‘OK, the kitchen goes here and that goes there.’ There was not one single thing about it that was built the normal way you build a restaurant.
“I think customers will see that and understand that it’s very special. At least I hope so. I’d hate to have done this whole project and have people say, ‘What in the world is this?’”
Substantial water damage in some rooms and general neglect throughout posed problems, but the building also boasted a treasure trove of late-19th century design elements, including beamed 22-foot ceilings; cherry, maple and white-oak wainscoting; wrought-iron railings; elegant cabinetry; and oversize fireplaces on each of its four floors as well as more than 100 lighting fixtures that could be rehabbed and retrofitted for electrical service.
Follow the Leader
The building’s fourth floor was the most architecturally
stunning, and it will be used primarily for private dining and
special events. One of many problems, however, was the absence
of a way to get diners—and their food—to the top
level short of exhausting them on stairways.
“Figuring out how and where to put two elevators in a 19th century landmark building was just one of the problems,” says Jay Haverson, partner in Greenwich, Conn.-based Haverson Architecture and Design, which had to solve the elevator problem along with many others.
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“It was challenge after challenge,” he says of the need to build modern-code infrastructure elements such as sprinklers and heating/air conditioning while preserving the landmark’s façade and the rooms’ original interiors (as mandated by omnipresent Boston city inspectors).
“It sounds silly, but it’s almost like the project designed itself,” says Haverson. “Often we’d have to go the way the building takes you. It made decisions for us.”
Among the compromises the space dictated were creation of service kitchens on all floors as well as a main kitchen (created in what had been the building’s adjoining drill hall). The first floor is home to a less-formal dining area and bar, with additional cocktail and dining space in the mezzanine. Main dining rooms are on the floors above.
The First Corps of Cadets is contributing artifacts (though no weapons) for display with other historical elements Stillman has collected.
Corporate hopes for the new Boston unit run high. One indication is that James Dunn stepped down as Smith & Wollensky president to run the restaurant.
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What Haverson says he has learned from the experience is that “everything costs more than you think and that you will end up with less space than you think, but go with the flow. This has been a dream project.”
Stillman sums up his lesson more succinctly: “Never do anything in a historic landmark again! This is a once-in-a-lifetime project. I hope.”
Bank on It
Zane Tankel, CEO of Harrison, N.Y.-based Apple-Metro, also understands
the difficulties of rehabbing old buildings, but he’s ready
to do it again.
In July, Apple-Metro—the New York City metro-area franchisee for Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar and operator of three Chevys Fresh Mex units—opened the second unit of its own concept, Zanaro’s Italian. Rather than in an entertainment complex like the first location (in New Rochelle, N.Y.), the second Zanaro’s is housed in what was built in 1925 as a White Plains, N.Y., branch of Home Savings Bank. Now it is an 8,000-square-foot, 250-seat “fine-casual” restaurant.
Apple-Metro already had plans to open a second Zanaro’s elsewhere when a real-estate developer called to say the bank building (near one of its Applebee’s) was available after Legal Sea Foods decided not to pursue the space. “I said that quite frankly I wasn’t interested. We’d already spent several hundred thousand dollars on plans,” Tankel recalls. “But it doesn’t cost anything to look. I went in and my mouth opened and my eyes got wide. I see 30-foot ceilings and all this marble and I think, ‘This is an Italian villa.’
“I told my partner, Roy Raeburn, ‘You’ve got to come see this.’ He said it didn’t make sense, and I said that’s what I had thought. He goes and has the same reaction.” The partners called the developer and sealed the deal.
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As with Smith & Wollensky’s Boston Armory, the White Plains bank building (also listed in the National Register) made some decisions for the developers. For example, the bank’s mammoth vault couldn’t be removed so it became one of several private-dining areas. Murals were added to the bank’s sober walls to provide a Tuscan feel.
The structure had basic utilities, although it required some code-mandated upgrades and structural modifications. An alleyway was enclosed, creating space for an open kitchen.
The result of the $3 million renovation, says Tankel, is what restaurateurs seek but often have difficulty creating: a distinctive space with décor that includes two-story windows, iron grill work and a (new) terra-cotta floor.
“If we make sure the food is as good as the environment and the experience, we’ve got something,” he says. “And we think we’re onto something in the sense that if we’re going to build more Zanaro’s, how are we going to replicate this? I started looking around and found that there’s a large stock of buildings like this that are too expensive to run as banks anymore. I’m getting calls from brokers saying they have a bank here or there.
“A place like this, it’s not going to be a Target store or a supermarket. It’s a fabulous restaurant.”
An Arresting Development
The Armory of the First Corps of Cadets
isn’t the only
historic Boston structure getting a new lease on livelihood.
In July, the Boston Police Headquarters, built in 1925, was reborn
as Jurys Boston Hotel.
Dublin-based Jurys Doyle Hotel Group plc developed the 10-story, 225-room property, which includes the Stanhope Grille restaurant, Cuffs-An Irish Bar and Il Barista coffee bar and lounge. The hotel’s lobby features a two-story water feature (with water flowing down a wall into a pool) and two-story fireplace.
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