OGDEN — It's not often that a makeover requires new bones.
But a grand old lady, the Ogden Municipal Building, has sat idle for two years as workers have scurried to both beautify the outside and strengthen and rework the inside of her 61-year-old body, all the while retaining her art deco soul.
The work has been as delicate as the carving of compass designs in wood trim and as monstrous as placing steel beams — some as heavy as 370 pounds per foot — in surgically precise locations to keep the building from leaning too far during earthquakes or high winds.
"With all the holes going through three levels of roof and down through 13 levels of cement floors, the building literally looked like a piece of Swiss cheese" during the process, said Michael DeCarlo, director of operations for Union Pointe Construction, the project contractor.
"We had holes everywhere. Every floor's holes had to match the holes going from the basement to the penthouse. It took slow, steady going to get all of the columns in without causing injury to anyone or damaging a floor."
Salt Lake-based Union Pointe is nearly finished with the two-year project to bring the 1939-vintage building into the 21st century via renovations and a seismic upgrade. Sporting a style straight out of Gotham City, the building actually is an FDR-era Public Works Administration legacy, worthy of its placement in the National Register of Historic Places.
Several redone features will be apparent to visitors when the place opens in October. New landscaping, windows and Minnesota granite are part of the spruced-up exterior. And over-the-entrance metal grillwork — dripping of art deco, with stylized musical notes, letters and other designs — has been redone to restore its luster and prominence.
Inside, visitors will encounter a huge star-compass design on the main lobby floor, a pattern carried out in wood throughout the building.
The hallways, chambers and offices all sport lighter wood stains — no more muddy brown — and marble from throughout the building now is used to decorate the entrance, line baseboards and surround water fountains. Renovated chairs in the City Council chambers have art deco designs on the end panels, and art deco colors are featured in bathroom tile patterns.
Less stylish but more functional are two new stairways between the first and ninth floors, renovated elevators, the removal of steel-plate walls and asphalt flooring in a former jail area and a computer room.
Not-so-obvious is the work to bolster the building. Huge steel I-beams were placed alongside or grafted to the existing concrete supports. Cross beams are usually hidden, although they are visible through windows in the lower-floor corners and an occasional diagonal beam connecting a hallway or office ceiling with a wall.
"Getting the new steel into the building was a huge undertaking," said Norm Whittle, Union Pointe's project superintendent. "We probably had a million tons of steel. The beams weighed 370 pounds per linear foot. We had to cut holes in the roof and through each of the 13 floors and lower steel columns down with a crane."
Crews faced few obstacles in their work, with a downed crane being the worst. An April 1999 windstorm left the crane draped over the building, but the damage totaled only about $50,000, and workers lost only one day of work, DeCarlo said.
Some of the existing concrete was strengthened by wrapping it in composite materials, and some of the metal beam-to-beam welds took 20 hours to complete.
Kim Hyatt, one of two principals at project architect Smith Hyatt Architects of Bountiful, noted that seismic science has evolved quite a bit since 1939, when a "whipping" building was deemed better able to withstand the forces of earthquakes and wind.
"What we do today makes the building much stiffer," he said. "We did that by threading a substantial amount of structural steel through the building and welding it together. It dampens the energy in the event of an earthquake.
"The top of the building would shake, probably less than 6 inches, but because it was a brittle building with masonry and concrete, that type of movement is excessive."
DeCarlo said clay tile walls easily could have collapsed with enough shaking. Now the clay tile is behind marble in the building's entrance, and the marble is bolted to the wall.
Another hidden part of the project involves ventilation. No more under-the-windows heating units, and ductwork in some parts of the building required drop ceilings.
A state-of-the-art sound system and computer capability enhancements marry new technology to the old building style.
"We knew all along that the interior would be quite a bit different just to house the city's functions," Hyatt said. "The interior would be less a preservation and more an adaptive reuse project."
Still, Ogden employees are eager to move back, according to Mayor Matthew Godfrey. The staffs of the courts, City Council and other administrative functions have been working from nearby offices.
City voters decided in a 1996 referendum that renovating the existing building was preferred to building a new one, he said.
"With these remodels, it's tough to take these old buildings and bring them up to code and earthquake requirements and make it aesthetically pleasing, but they've done a good job," Godfrey said.
"People wanted to see it stay. The art deco architecture is unique, especially in this area. There's a lot of craftsmanship in it. With a new building, we could have had the same amount of space and functionality, but we couldn't provide same artistic character."
That art deco character is evident in only two other Ogden buildings: the U.S. Forest Service building and Ogden High School.
"I'm just glad they saved an old building. It's amazing that Ogden saw it the same way Salt Lake saw theirs and saved a beautiful building," DeCarlo said. "There was no way you could replace it. It would have been a steel-and-glass building, obviously efficient but offering very little architecturally.
"I love old buildings. They are the most challenging but the most rewarding when the work is completed."
Hyatt concurred. "I'm pleased to be able to work on this building," he said. "One of the reasons I got into architecture is my love for old buildings, old things and history. It's important that they be preserved.
"I could have made more money and had fewer headaches with a new building, but it would not have been as interesting or gratifying in the end."
E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com