West
Union House, 1515 Union Street
The new seven-story building at 1515 Union Street brings forty-one condominiums to northern San Francisco. SGH consulted on the building enclosure design for the project.
San Francisco, CA
Omni Hotel
Scope/Solutions
The owner planned to rehabilitate the 1927 office building and adapt it for use as a luxury hotel. The brick walls of the fifteen-story building had large vertical cracks at the corners and suffered from water leakage. SGH investigated the steel-framed building with masonry infill walls, brick and cast stone cladding, and large, wood framed double hung windows.
SGH performed a window and facade investigation and determined the brick was not adequately anchored at the corners of the building. We designed an anchorage system for the brick that could be installed from the exterior through the mortar joints, causing minimal disruption to the interior finishes and exterior historic fabric.
We also analyzed the exterior wall stability in various seismic events and evaluated the performance of the exterior walls, if strengthened or if left unrepaired, under different levels of earthquake. With information from our study, the owner was able to decide if they wanted to invest in strengthening the exterior walls.
SGH presented our solutions to the Foundation for San Francisco’s Architectural Heritage. We developed a restoration program that included stabilization repairs, as well as repointing, patching, pinning and cleaning of the exterior brick and cast stone facades. We prepared construction documents, and provided construction administration services for the restoration work.
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Project Summary
2003
Completion Date
Award
Winner
Solutions
Repair & Rehabilitation | Preservation
Services
Building Enclosures | Structures
Markets
Commercial
Client(s)
Patri Merker Architects, Inc.
Specialized Capabilities
Seismic Engineering | Repair & Strengthening | Condition Assessments | Preservation
Key team members
Additional Projects
West
Millennium Tower, 301 Mission Street
SGH assessed the effects of this movement on the building’s stability and earthquake resistance, and designed an upgrade to arrest further settlement and reverse much of the tilting.