Project Update: Historic Restoration of The Great Southern Hotel
Beginning this project in 1999, Peacock Architects were hired as the historic architects on the historic restoration of the iconic Great Southern Hotel that was finally completed this year.
Initially hired to restore three of the main facades- north, east, and west that were originally constructed in 1920, Peacock planned to reconstruct the ground floor large arched windows and entrances, replicate the windows, install the striped awnings over all the windows, recreate the large metal canopy with glass bulbs at the main entrances, and restore the cast moldings along the facades. This would restore the building to its 1924 appearance based on historical documentation we received from the historic society of Hollywood.
The largest challenge was figuring out how to get these walls to stand because testing of the concrete showed the strength was around 1300psi, meaning it was nowhere near the required strength for concrete. This has to do with the fact that back in the day they used to create concrete mixes with sand from the beach which causes the concrete to deteriorate over time. The structural engineer designed a new wall system that would be poured behind the existing walls, and the restored walls would be fastened to this for support. During selective demolition of the building, we found the walls had deteriorated worse than expected.
The building official had visited the site and deemed the building an unsafe structure and gave us a notice to demolish the walls. Since preservations was no longer feasible, our plans changed from preservation to historic reconstruction.
During the design phases of the project we had the building 3D scanned along with the other documentation our team had collected over the years. We utilized this information, historic drawings, and historic pictures to create the reconstruction documents. The portions of the building that were salvaged were used to create the cast molding, and design the window cast molds. The windows were preserved and measured/documented which was used when creating the new custom windows.
Today the building stands proudly on the corner of young circle and Hollywood boulevard. Three stories tall with its mansard roof, arched windows, and medallion cast moldings. The top floor is to be part of the hotel, so guest can stay in the great southern hotel. A display case is located at the street level with historic artifacts salvaged there for all to see.
