WRITTEN BY | CHRISTINA KOCH W
ith the help of modern tech- nology and genealogy websites, many Americans can trace their family trees back to the first ances- tor who set foot on U.S. soil. But not
many Americans actually can walk in those ancestors’ foot- steps. As principal in charge of the renovation and restoration of the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station in Wilmington, Del., local architect William Holloway, AIA, LEED AP, with Bernardon Haber Holloway Architects PC, had the rare opportunity to get a glimpse of the railroad history of which his great-grandfather played a significant role. In 1906, Holloway’s great-grandfather, Jacob Mesch, emigrated
from Riga, Latvia, to Wilmington. He was a cabinetmaker by trade, and his first U.S. job was woodworking inside the private railroad cars being built at Jackson and Sharp Co., a Wilmington rail and shipyard. Those cars eventually made their way to the new Wilm- ington train station (now Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station), which began operating in 1907. The cars actually would become the station’s main attraction because Frank Furness, one of the highest-paid architects of the time, had designed Wilmington sta- tion to celebrate America’s industrial strength and to take advan- tage of Wilmington’s newly elevated rail lines. Furness designed the station so the trains would run through the second floor of the building. The main waiting area was placed at track level to allow passengers the ability to marvel the trains while a concourse and ticketing area were tucked away under the tracks at street level. As architect of record, Holloway’s firm had the opportunity to improve upon what Furness created and celebrate the thoughtful
craftsmanship of Holloway’s great-grandfather’s era by integrating the best of modern technology into the station while refurbishing its historic splendor. “The station is an icon of Wilmington, and we were honored as local architects to have the ability to influence how the fa- cility is going to be used for the next 30 years or more,” Holloway says. “I took a personal interest in it, certainly. It became a labor of love.”
In Motion Despite always having an interest in the station, which today is
owned by Washington, D.C.-based Amtrak, Holloway and his firm weren’t just handed the opportunity to oversee its first major renovation/restoration since the early 1980s. Bernardon Haber Holloway Architects, which for the past 15 years has had a ma- jor focus on adaptive reuse and historic restoration, was se- lected to take part in an intensive interview process that included Delaware’s Secretary of Transportation and Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) who serves on the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure and is a well- known supporter of rail transportation.
May-June 2013 // RETROFIT 31
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84