The existing conditions of the buildings included multiple insensitive renovations from the past 150 years, extensive termite and water damage, and differential settlement ranging between 2 and 11 ½ inches throughout the building.  Failing structural elements of load bearing masonry and heavy timber concealed a century and a half of needed repairs, rendering entire portions of the existing building unsafe prior to remediation.  Additionally, during Hurricane Katrina, storm force winds lifted the gravity-held roof from the structure, causing the collapse of support columns, and the need for temporary shoring to prevent complete failure in the decade to follow.  As such, the intensity, complexity, and technological innovation required for the remediation and coordination cannot be overstated.  The entire endeavor was rife with challenges, as each newly discovered condition required fast, creative solutions.

Zoning restrictions placed strict height limits on the building’s potential expansion, namely a penthouse addition and roof-mounted HVAC equipment.  In close coordination with city planners, the New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Commission, and the National Parks Service, architects negotiated a 6^th floor addition with minimal impacts on the building’s massing and visual presence.  This hard cap on final building height elevation required remediation crews to carefully coordinate the releveling of intermediate floors without impacting the building’s final roof height.

The focal point of the space is a three-story, glass-encased display wall showcasing thousands of bottles from the array of New Orleans specific Sazerac products. The 46-foot-tall backlit display carves through the three floors of museum experience and serves as a backdrop for a monumental staircase connecting one exhibit to the next. Complementing the exhibit spaces are speak-easy style tasting rooms, rum aging and blending areas, and the return of the production of historic Peychaud’s bitters to New Orleans.

Sazerac also wanted a contractor who could easily adapt to change and could find creative solutions to a variety of unexpected challenges. For example, the exhibit space’s three-story bottle wall – conceptualized as the museum’s “wow” moment – was a complicated and unprecedented endeavor, and the RGGC team had to coordinate with multiple disciplines, including electrical, structural, millwork, and exhibitry to get it done. “They all had to be involved in those meetings,” Thomas says, “to actually collaborate on how to construct it, install lighting components, get the 1,400 bottles installed correctly, and trim it out.”  The use of numerous iterative on-site mockups proved critical in fine-tuning the design of such a complex element.  “The design phase can only go so far in anticipating the interrelated complexities of such a striking and challenging architectural crescendo.  RGGC’s team became active design partners as all members of the GC team (from president to project manager) were actively engaged in problem solving and troubleshooting through hands-on design.” – Shea Trahan, Project Architect.  “The mutual respect and combination of skills between architects, contractors, and engineers is the core reason the bottle wall is so stunning today.”

In the end, Sazerac’s overriding goal was to re-create the historical integrity of the building, while giving it a new, exciting purpose. “We’ve been extremely careful to maintain the historical relevance of the building,” says Sazerac’s Broussard. “We wanted to ensure that if it was possible for someone to come back from 1870 and visit the building, they would remember it exactly like that.”

It was RGGC’s job to “put it back that way,” he adds. “And you know, RGGC has been true to that. We’ve never wavered from that since the beginning. We’re all extremely aligned on maintaining the historical preservation of the buildings.”