Dreamland plans missing historical elements

FILE PHOTO The interior of the Dreamland Theater before the historic structure was dismantled in March 2009. The Nantucket Dreamland Foundation's new vision of the 177-year-old building omitted much of the historical material salvaged during its demolition, and for that reason the Historic District Commission slammed NDF's revised plans on Dec. 15.

On that night, the Dreamland Foundation showed the HDC a twostory building, instead of a three-story, that is around 25 percent smaller in square footage, but without the use of historic trusses, roof sheathing and window sills — all building materials that NDF committed to originally and received HDC approval for working into the revival of the Dreamland Theater as drawn by CBT Architects of Boston, Mass.

Having since ditched CBT for Tom Catalano Architects and John Lodge Architects, both of Boston, Mass, who put forth this latest design, the Dreamland Foundation is taking a different course that had some members of the commission scratching their heads and asking for major revisions.

The biggest hit for the HDC, historic preservationwise, was NDF's plan not to use the trusses removed from the building because its engineers said that the bottom of the trusses, hanging down about 10 feet, six inches above the second floor would partially block the projection of films. NDF's engineers also said that because the theater would be built adhering to the new, seventh edition of the state's building code instead of the sixth that the currently approved plans were locked into, the seismic and wind load requirements are much greater, preventing the use of the trusses. Even with the steel gusset plates planned for strengthening the trusses, under this seventh edition, they would not meet the building code requirement of 120 milean hour loading plus a safety factor of 25 percent beyond for buildings with occupancy of more than 300, said Tom Catalano.

"Our engineers have come back and said there is no viable way we can use the trusses in a structural manner," Tom Catalano told the HDC. "The other challenge that we've been given is that we need to reduce the cost of the building and that's one of the reasons we think devoting precious resources to these things, which limit our ability to use the room is not the way to go. So we're proposing to use the sash, use as much of the exiting lumber that's been salvaged as we can, but not use the trusses."

Catalano added that they want to build new frames and sills to work with the sash of the windows, and use the original glass.

"I see a lot of problems," said HDC member Linda Williams. "This board worked on this a very long time with CBT. CBT knew every single inch of the building. You don't have a sense of this building while it was still up.

"You'd have to sit down and listen to like 500 hours of tape to understand how we got to where we were. My biggest problem is that you're driving changes on the outside, which we were not thrilled with in the first place, because of interior uses."

Staunch preservationist HDC member Valerie Norton agreed with Williams' dismay over the omission of the historic building materials.

"That's the history of the building. If you take that away, you don't have any of that anymore," she said.

While Williams added that she did not like the windows on the Oak Street side of the first floor, fellow commissioner David Barham felt differently.

"This is a building that has been repurposed and significantly altered a number of times over its history, and it its being repurposed again, and it seems reasonable to me that there would have been a row of first floor windows," he said. "I'm also comfortable for the same reason of adding the two windows over the marquee on South Water Street. It makes it friendlier to neighbors."

Further revisions include lowering the eave height of the front façade and adding two windows on its second floor to get more western light into the building, adding windows to first floor facing Oak Street in an effort to revive the meetinghouse look of the old building and shrinking the length of the building by 16 feet, three inches, which allows for more outdoor use space on its Easy Street end.

And it is at this end where NDF ran into more problems. Some members of the HDC did not like the "country club" look of a cupola with proposed motorized windows for ventilation nor the sliding rear door and asked the architects to come up with a design that is more appropriate for the area considering that it is a gateway to the town from the Easy Street Basin.

Given that the commission expected a whole slew of changes to NDF's new design, it continued its public hearing to Jan. 5. I