Architectural Magic

How do you turn a bay window into gold?  Simple, just make it disappear.

 

Corey and Ben McMills of McMills Construction had a problem.  Their investment property on Oak Street, near Ashbury and facing the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park, needed to have a garage built to enhance his tenant’s use of the building and maximize their rent.  Parking, as is true in much of San Francisco, is hard to find in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and is almost more valuable than living space.  They turned to Beausoleil Architects for help.

The bottom floor of the building, a historic Victorian apartment house, had a hodgepodge of storage rooms, utility spaces and an ancient studio apartment shoehorned between a dozen wood posts.  The original brick foundations were underfoot.  The project structural engineer, Don David of Double D Engineering determined that as part of upgrading the seismic strength of the structure they could get rid of the columns and the partitions, build new concrete footings, and create a clean open garage space.  The problem, as Corey found out when he asked the planning department to review the project, was how to get a car in.

The front wall of the ground floor had a three sided bay window, with windows on each face, matching the bays on the levels above, and the city planning department had recently started enforcing its mandate to limit changes to the character of historic building’s front facades – including conversion of bay windows into garage doors. Their design guidelines require that fronts of buildings, front yards, fencing, and similar relics of historic design be left largely intact, and that changes must be made in accordance with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation of Historic Buildings. Replacement of the bay window with a garage door, a common practice for many years, was no longer an option.

Corey, a mechanical engineer by education and a problem solver by nature, conceived the idea of converting the walls of the bay window into door panels that would fold into the garage space to allow cars to enter, and then fold back into place, keeping the historic appearance intact.  The planning department agreed that this concept was provisionally acceptable.  To help him realize this concept, Corey hired fellow problem solver Robert Boles of Beausoleil Architects to devise the details and keep the project in-line with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards.  One of the goals of the standards is to keep not only the historical appearance, but to keep the ‘historic fabric’ – the original wood and glass building materials – intact wherever possible.

Beausoleil carefully measured the elements of the existing façade and drew them up, then determined how the bay window sides could be split apart from the rest of the building with almost invisible seams.  They envisioned a steel framework that would be secured to the back of the walls before they were cut away from the structure – allowing the fabric of the building to remain virtually intact, studs, siding, windows all moving in concert. The front yard, which had a possibly original wrought iron fence, also had to be redesigned to incorporate a driveway and a percentage of planting areas in accordance with the zoning code. Beausoleil prepared a supplementary set of construction drawings to complement the structural set previously approved.

To make the doors work mechanically, there are two floor mounted hydraulic activators, which rotate the doors on pivot hinges. Further details, including control and security hardware, were worked out in the field by the installer, Rick Dentoni of Automatic Gate Installations.

The new garage will provide four parking spaces, while eliminating only ten feet of parking space on the street.  While not entirely pleasing to the city planners, who consider cars to be the spawn of the devil, the new parking will no doubt be very useful to the tenants, at least until we can devise our next trick – teleportation!

The project still needs a little finish carpentry and painting, but you can get the idea in the photos and video below.

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Garage door closed                                             Garage door open

 

 

Comments

[unknowntheartist]

Absolutely fantastic! I love keeping the original facade and having it modernized that way for parking. Impressive!

[ejcsanfran]

Quite amazing. Though I suspect there'll be an ongoing issue with cars parking parallel and blocking the driveway. Having grown up in the Haight, I know that this is a problem even when it's obvious that a driveway leads to a garage.

[NJVA]

How much space is lost so the door may close?

[Asilee Barnes]

Awesome.

[john]

its so batcave!

[L.M.]

TOTALLY AUSTIN POWERS LOVE THIS GREAT WORK

[Andrew, EIT]

I have a solution to the parking problem. What you need to do is take down the tacky sign on the front of the house and install a hydraulically retractable fire hydrant in front.

Thanks, I am a little bit in love.

[Riverhawk]

why isn't the bottom window a single hung window instead of two. it doesn't match the upper two middle windows. it doesn't match the other two windows. sorry for damping the love

[Lucy]

Clever and no doubt super expensive, tho I could see this getting popular if standardized & made in a factory for people who hate the 'snout' look of protuburant suburban garages.

[Derek]

It's a great solution to city bureaucracy! It looks decent, too. However, the overall building is old and ugly. Bureaucrats are stubborn and insist that they know best when they really don't.

In some cities, that house would be illegal. No front yard and no side yard. See, that's another example of a bureaucrat thinking they know best. If that house were built in another city, the bureaucrats would slap a notice on the structure and say "tear it down".

[catherine]

that would mean tearing down most houses derek. i like the building...ugly is a subjective term.

[Ash]

Brilliant!

[qweqw]

Imbeciles.
That city will be destroyed by a 9.2 anyway.

[Dennis-buskirk]

This is totally awesome. And they don't have to give up the old fashion look to boot. I'm just glad they don't have some idiot in city government that has got a family member wanting favors by having the contractors spend money that is not needed to be spent. I have seen that way too many time before.

[jackBarry99]

I am opposed to going to all that $$ and use of power to construct a fake facade...

I see many beautiful old Vics with beautiful garage doors on the front , grade level... I live next to one...

Aesthetics aside, the electricity used to move all that weight! What a waste.

[Gary R. Collins, AIA]

Sustainability: enhanced by limiting in-town auto use in favor of walking and public transit.

The public street: security is not enhanced by rows of garage doors, real or faux.

Clever solutions: Although this may be a miniscule example, engineering genius has historically dug the environmental hole deeper by serving immediate societal wishes for growth, as if divinely mandated, before understanding unintended consequences. This will also apply to much "green" engineering and preservationist public policy, without a doubt. Bottom line: there is now room for one more car in the city.

[Kent]

All good until people park across the entrance because they don't realise it's a garage.

[Jordan Wutkee]

Derek, this house was originally built before the most draconian zoning laws came into being. Those bureaucrats you deride are the ones responsible for the modern suburban landscape of front lawns. Dense cities filled with old houses like this one are the product of the free market, in spite of the municipal bureaucracies. The sprawling suburbs were designed by bureaucrats who suppose they know best, with the subversive effect of isolating people, and preventing strong communities from forming in dense neighborhoods.

[Home Staging Toronto]

That's another example of a bureaucrat thinking they know best. If that house were built in another city, the bureaucrats would slap a notice on the structure and say "tear it down".

[Locksmith Concord Nc]

great list, there are things on there that I haven’t thought about before Locksmith in Concord Nc

[apartment for rent in makati]

Renovation can be tricky at times. Given that the place had no space to expand, instead by expanded to two levels.

[Philippines Real Estate]

This is certainly a brilliant idea. It will add more space to the house.

[Manila Condo]

Wonderful! The space can be turned into garage.

[elliptical reviews]

No offense, but i suggest admin adding a google+ button for easy share!

[Shawn Doucette]

Any Idea of cost?