What Preservation Review Asks of a Ground Floor Storefront
By Michael Stern, JDS Development Group On a designated building the masonry pier standing between two ground floor openings is usually what decides the storefront. It carries load, it is part of what was designated, and the width it keeps is width the display window never gets. I am writing this for developers taking on a conversion, for the restoration architects who will draw the base, and for the retail teams who arrive late and find most of their decisions already made. The base of an old building is the part a person can touch and the part that has been rebuilt the most. Floors above the second tend to survive by neglect. The ground floor has been reworked for whatever business occupied it, which is why by the time we buy the building the storefront is often the least historic thing on the facade and the most closely reviewed. That gap between what is there and what is protected is the first thing to establish. The designation report describes the building the city chose to p...