The YMCA building on the Texas A&M campus has been empty for five years due to structural concerns, but connections to the university’s College of Architecture are emerging as the building’s renovation gains momentum.
Quimby McCoy Preservation Architecture was awarded the building’s renovation project earlier this month. Firm principal Nancy McCoy, who received a Bachelor of Environmental Design degree from Texas A&M’s College of Architecture in 1981, will be serving as principal in charge of the project.
Patrick Sparks and Donna Carter, Professional Fellows of the college’s Center for Heritage Conservation, will also be working on the project with Quimby McCoy. Carter is a former CHC symposium speaker.
In the spring of 2008 Anne Stimmel created a design for the renovation of the 1914 building as her final Master of Architecture degree project at the College of Architecture, providing a picture of what the building’s renovation could look like.
“The biggest challenge,” said Stimmel about the design project, “was making an addition that didn’t look out of place, but went with the historic building and the surrounding buildings on campus,” she said.
In her design, Stimmel also had to accommodate the office needs of Texas A&M’s faculty senate, dean of faculties, the philosophy department and the university’s president of marketing and communication.
She sought to:
Her design’s signature stroke is a large glass connector that reaches to the top of the building, linking the historic part of the building with a new addition. The feature lets natural light flood into the building’s atrium on all its floor levels and the building’s inner rooms.
Fans around the top edge of the atrium’s roof reduce heat gain, as does shallow ductwork that is used only in hallways. This allows for the preservation, Stimmel said, of the building’s original ceiling heights and prevents windows from being cut by drop down ceilings.
In her design, each office occupant got a much-sought-after amenity. “One of the things I tried to do was make sure every office had a window,” she said.
Stimmel is now an intern architect at ArchiTexas, a preservation-based architecture firm with offices in Dallas and Austin.
She’s currently working on a renovation of the Fannin County courthouse in Bonham, approximately 70 miles northeast of Dallas. “It was remodeled in 1964 and and we’re taking it back to what it looked like originally in the 1800s,” she said.
