Since 2000, the Golden Hammer Awards have recognized the professionals and ordinary people who work to revitalize neighborhoods, reduce blight and promote historic preservation in the city of Richmond. Sponsored by Historic Richmond and Storefront for Community Design, the competition honors excellence in five categories: best adaptive reuse, best new construction, best placemaking, best residential and best restoration.
“The collective work of our nominees reflects innovative solutions to address contemporary issues, marking a year of progress towards a more vibrant and equitable Richmond with more housing, more food, more parks, more history and more education,” says Cyane Crump, executive director of Historic Richmond, on the accomplishments of this year’s winners.
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Hatch Kitchen RVA at Clopton Siteworks
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Cooperage II
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The Emerald Barn
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Arts & Letters Creative Co.
Best Adaptive Reuse
Hatch Kitchen RVA at Clopton Siteworks converted part of the former Philip Morris tobacco warehouse complex into a food and beverage incubator, creating low-cost, low commitment startup space for aspiring culinary enterprises. The Hatch Kitchen campus offers commercial kitchen space and a 125-seat cafe, 10,000 square feet of production space, bottling and canning lines, USDA-certified meat processing equipment, and co-warehousing space, in three separate buildings.
“The inspiration for the incubator came from the enormous need in Richmond's food/beverage community for affordable, flexible space where a business could get started without the huge up-front cost of equipment and build-out or a long-term lease,” explains John Gregroy, principal at Lynx Ventures, the developer of Clopton Siteworks and co-owner of Hatch. The need, it turns out, was greatest among women and people of color. “Over 70% of Hatch members are woman- or minority-owned businesses. It's been very gratifying to see so many success stories of businesses that may never have gotten off the ground without the start-up resources that Hatch provides.”
Project team: Lynx Ventures; Fultz & Singh Architects (architect); Balzer & Associates (engineer); M.L. Bell Construction (contractor); Sadler & Whitehead LLC (tax credit consultant)
Cooperage II at 1654 Overbrook Road is a village of 57 residential units built within the walls of four tobacco warehouses in greater Scott’s Addition. Massive skylights illuminate a pair of interior plazas where urban street-front entrances encircle landscaped courtyards. The project satisfied preservation requirements that prohibit altering the facade of a windowless structure.
Project team: Historic Housing, LLC; SWA-Architects-VA Inc. (architect); Speight, Marshall, & Francis (engineer); Emerge Construction Group, LLC (contractor); Sadler & Whitehead LLC (tax credit consultant)
When the Emerald Barn, a 1907 streetcar barn, was originally transformed into a collaborative workspace, it became the first building in the U.S. to be LEED Platinum certified, Net Zero Energy. Its second phase of development in 2021 doubled the square footage of office space, conditioned the warehouse space, incorporated additional natural light, upgraded insulation, added energy-efficient windows, energy recovery ventilators, additional geothermal heating/cooling, sustainable flooring and LED lighting, as well as three solar arrays and new green space.
Project team: Yellow Brook Road LLC, Julie and Paul Weissend; Walter Parks Architects, Sarah McInerney, RA (architect); Galen Staengl, CMTA,Inc., Lee Harrelson, PE LEED AP (engineer); Dovetail Construction Company, Inc. (contractor); Kim Chen (NRHP Listing)
Arts and Letters Creative Co. reinvented the 1930s-era Lucky Strike complex power plant in Tobacco Row into a vibrant corporate headquarters. The national branding and marketing company floated a pair of sleek white freestanding structures within the building’s original brick and tile shell to allow for additional workspace and to celebrate the contrast between old and new.
Project team: Arts & Letters Creative Co.; ARCHITECTUREFIRM (architect); Engineering Solutions, AKF Group (engineer); DPR Construction (contractor)
Bringing Families Home
Best New Construction
A pair of newly constructed homes at 1701 and 1701.5 N. 21st St. will provide affordable housing, workforce development and support to low-income families in Church Hill. Called Bringing Families Home, the project is a proof-of-concept partnership between the public and private sectors that can be replicated across Richmond’s East End by the local housing authority.
Project team: Urban Hope, Inc.; Maggie Walker Community Land Trust; ReWork RVA; Peter Paul Development Center; TM VAVRA (architect); Eagle of VA (contractor)
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The JXN Project, "Unveiling the Vanguard: A Virtual Experience"
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The Low Line Green
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Church Hill North and the Kitchens at Reynolds
Best Placemaking
The JXN Project, “Unveiling the Vanguard: A Virtual Experience,” is a self-guided tour of 15 street signs, pole banners and sidewalk stamps celebrating the 150th anniversary of Jackson Ward as the nation's first historically registered Black urban neighborhood.
Project team: Enjoli Moon and Sesha Joi Moon; Barry O’Keefe (digitized woodcuts), Meredith Carrington (graphic design), Mosca Design (pole banner fabrication), Keith Fabry (pole banner installation), Venture Richmond (pole banner installation), City of Richmond Department of Public Works (sign and stencil installation)
Richmond Commons was designated the first public open space in Richmond in 1737. The Low Line Green revitalization transformed the 2.5 acres of long-neglected waterfront into an aesthetically pleasing and environmentally sound urban green space that runs parallel to the James River and Kanawha Canal.
“A public landscape can transform a space into a place,” says Frazier Armstrong, who served as executive director of Capital Trees during completion of the Low Line project. “We knew if we built it, they would come. That’s what public landscapes do…they bring people together."
Project team: Capital Trees; City of Richmond Department of Public Utilities; Waterstreet Studio (architect); VHB (engineer); Dorin Construction/James River Nurseries (contractor)
In the heart of Church Hill, the new Reynolds College Culinary School wraps around a large open-air atrium and greenhouse. Above the school’s two lower levels, the building is divided into affordable housing on the east and commercial office and restaurant spaces to the west. Known as Church Hill North and Kitchens at Reynolds, it is the heart of a larger development that includes a grocery store/pharmacy and resources to promote healthy living and community engagement.
Project team: Steven Markel, Church Hill North Holdings LLC (owner); Quinn Evans (architect of record); O'Neill McVoy Architects (design architects); Timmons Group (civil engineer, landscape architect); Valley Engineering (MEP); Silman (structural); Hourigan (contractor); Clyde Construction Engineering (owner’s project manager); Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer (commercial leasing agent)
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805 Chimborazo Blvd.
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The Villacarillo Residence
Best Residential
Originally built on infill, the foundation of the 1926 home at 805 Chimborazo Blvd. had sunk over time. Before being restored as a single-family dwelling, the 823-square-foot house had to be lifted from its foundation onto 27 push piers. The successful restoration was a pilot project to be used by other Habitat for Humanity affiliates across the state to bring new life to historic homes.
Project team: Richmond Metropolitan Habitat for Humanity; Obsidian (architect, engineer); David Herring (tax credit consultant); Maggie Walker Community Land Trust
Part of a neighborhood of midcentury homes in historic Bon Air, the Villacarillo residence features a floor-to-ceiling living room picture window to take full advantage of the surrounding woodland. Although many original elements of the house, such as its asbestos tile and warped wood paneling, had to removed, period color palettes and 1957 construction materials were referenced to select appropriate, practical replacements.
The big challenge was, “preserving and protecting the home’s original radiant floor system (cast into a concrete slab) while removing a bearing wall and adding power and plumbing for a new kitchen island,” explains Matthew Warner, founder and owner of RIC design build. The design team and the owners kept true to their shared vision to take advantage of oversize windows, including a floor to ceiling picture window in the living room, to open the dining, living and kitchen areas to views of its sloping, wooded lot in Bon Air.
Project Team: Ron Villacarillo; RIC design build (designer, contractor)
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The Dr. William Hughes house
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Masons' Hall
Best Restoration
With the help of documentation and photographs provided by the community, both the 1915 Colonial Revival home of Dr. William Hughes at 508 St. James St. as well as its 1952 midcentury modern three-story addition were restored and converted to an affordable housing complex of four separate units, including basement living space. Missing porches were re-created, stairs and fireplaces restored, and details inside and out were painstakingly re-crafted.
Project team: Zarina Fazaldin; Johannas Design Group (architect); Harki Singh - HS Engineering (engineer); L&Z Historic, LLC (contractor); Catherine Easterling - Sadler & Whitehead LLC (tax credit consultant); Virginia Housing (project funding); Marjorie Davidson, PE - MJDavidson Consulting; Tracy Winleman Ruff - Kine Vue, LLC (civil engineering)
“Selecting a color scheme for the building was one of the biggest challenges,” admits Danielle Porter, director of preservation service at Historic Richmond, about the restoration of Masons’ Hall, at 1807 E. Franklin St. One of the oldest structures in Richmond, it has been owned continuously by the Masons since its completion in 1787.
The project team had to “determine which period of significance to interpret and restore the building to. We ultimately selected 1872, because it was more complete and closer to the appearance of the building today,” Porter says. The recently preservation included emergency stabilization of a broken truss, structural roof repairs, plaster repairs, repairs to the cupola, window restoration, and exterior facade rehabilitation.
The most gratifying part of the experience, she confides, was “the number of friends and volunteers that provided assistance, and contractors that provided their work to stabilize and restore Masons’ Hall, in many cases for little more than love of an old building.”
Project team: Richmond Randolph Lodge No. 19 and Masons’ Hall 1785, a charitable foundation; Historic Richmond; Bryan Clark Green/Commonwealth Architects; Randy Tritt/Balzer and Associates, Inc. (engineer); Sincostan Development; David Cooley of Restoration Builders of Virginia; Dixon Kerr of Old House Authority; Colonial Plaster; Randy Wingfield of City Wide Decorators (contractors); the Svoboda family and Matthew and Genevieve Mezzanotte Foundation; Dr. Susan Buck (conservator); the late Edward Chappell (director of archaeological research at Colonial Williamsburg); Sumpter Priddy, III (scholar, American decorative arts; 1200 Architectural Engineers; Prologue Systems (3D laser scans)
