NFPA Journal - September/October 2019 - 44

Repurposing a historic building

T

HE MUSEUM OF the
Bible, located near the
National Mall in Washington, DC, is housed
in a building that once
served as the city's main cold storage
warehouse. Adapting this historic
building for museum use, while working within the constraints of a limited
site and accommodating an ambitious,
complex plan, was a difficult challenge,
both architecturally and from a life
safety perspective. Our team of architects and fire protection engineers
worked with the authority having
jurisdiction (AHJ), museum curators,
exhibit designers, the contractor, and
specialty trade partners to deliver the
museum in just over five years, from
the initial concept to the opening day
on November 17, 2017. Along the way,
we had to solve numerous design and
life safety challenges, including party
wall separations between the museum
and the adjacent building, atrium
smoke control design, and complexities
associated with museum exhibits that
essentially created multiple museums
within a museum.
In the end, we delivered one of the
most technologically advanced museums in the world, a $500 million,
430,000-square-foot facility spanning
eight stories that includes exhibit
space, research laboratories and libraries, a lecture hall, a performing arts
venue, a 500-seat ballroom, visiting
scholar residences, classrooms, offices,
and a rooftop garden and restaurant.
The Museum of the Bible harnesses
cutting-edge technology to create an
immersive and engaging experience for
visitors as they explore the history, narrative, and impact of the Bible. Facility
features include "digital docents" that
provide location-dependent information, 12 theaters that provide an
immersive audiovisual experience-
including an interactive chamber that
allows visitors to virtually fly and hover
over sites of biblical significance-and

44 | NFPA JOURNAL * S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 9

a conference center with simultaneous
translation capabilities.
The cold storage warehouse was
originally built by the Terminal Refrigerating and Warehouse Co. in 1923.
With a train spur that ran directly into
the building, it housed cold storage and
an ice plant before eventually falling
into disuse after the adoption of home
refrigeration. In the 1970s, the building
was repurposed as the Washington
Design Center, and was used to showcase interior design and architectural
products for the next 35 years. One of
our primary goals for the project was
to reference the architectural heritage
of the site while providing a thoroughly
modern experience for visitors and
extensive support facilities for the
institution.
In order to house the many programmatic elements required for this new
institution, additions and renovations
were ultimately made to three existing structures that occupied this city
block. The existing warehouse's original
red-brick masonry and concrete were
retained and restored, and the historic
structure's original train portal was
reopened to serve as the museum's
monumentally scaled entrance. An
additional two levels of new construction were built above the remaining
historic structure to house a 472-seat
performing-arts hall, gathering space,
restaurant, and additional exhibit
spaces. At mid-block, a non-historical
building addition with loading dock
was removed to make way for two
levels of below-grade space and new
vertical circulation for the museum.
The Museum of the Bible organization also purchased the air rights to
the adjacent Washington Office Center,
where a one-story addition above the
building was constructed to provide
space for a conference and educational
facility for scholars associated with the
museum's research arm, Museum of the
Bible Scholars Initiative, as well as residences for visiting scholars.

OLD SPACE, NEW USE
Clockwise from top: Most of
the new museum is in a former
cold-storage facility, with the
addition of a rooftop level that also
extends over an adjacent office
building; the old cold-storage
building, with railroad tracks
running into the second level;
the museum shop; and the new
monumental entrance to the
museum, in the space where the
railroad tracks formerly entered
the building.

About the authors
Sarah Ghorbanian, LEED AP,
project manager; Viral Amin,
P.E., LEED AP, principal, fire
protection and life safety
engineering; and Kyle Lehman,
P.E., principal, fire protection
and life safety engineering,
are with SmithGroup, an
architectural design firm in
Washington, DC.
NFPA Journal - September/October 2019

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