delaide Hall is Clementine's signature space. It's our largest, oldest, and arguably grandest space. As such was the primary focus of our redesign. As the sanctuary, it was the heart of the church, and today it is where most wedding ceremonies, receptions, concerts, dinners, presentations, film and most everything else occur.
Before
The sanctuary was the original structure on the property, built in 1889. Forty five pews remained fixed to the heart pine floors for nearly 130 years. Red carpet lined the aisles. A hip ceiling hid the wood beams. Concrete coved the brick walls. Steel windows replaced the original wood framed windows sometime in the early 1900s.
In 1905, the pipe organ (more on the pipe organ here) was added and a transept expanded the size of the building (now the Side Stage). Also sometime midcentury, eight chandeliers were added to the sactuary (now refurbished and hanging in Little Bird Lounge). And there were rumors of a balcony in the room for a brief period.
When we began demolition we were anxious to see if we would be able to confirm the addition of the transept and the balcony. But we were more anxious to see if the brick and beams that were revealed would be the high quality we hoped they might be.
Issues & Plan
We began by removing all of the original 1889 pews. Today you can find them all over town, including at the tattoo shop down the block (we did keep four and they're in the Tiger Room). The red carpet was removed, revealing the original heart pine floors. And we put out a "free to a good home" call for the organ, but that is another wild story you can read about.
As with Little Bird Lounge, uncovering the brick wall as the first objective of the demolition. The brick walls were covered from the very beginning by a concrete slurry that was then painted white and a wood wainscoting. Revealing the brick was arduous and the biggest mess imaginable. First, the concrete was chipped away by hand. Then the brick was blasted with baking soda to remove the excess concrete while not pitting the brick. Last, all mortar joints were repointed as mortar from 1889 turns to putty over time. When we removed the concrete, we discovered several gothic windows and the original doorway to the bell tower, all of which had been filled with rubble, covered in concrete, and whitewashed.
Another dramatic change to the room occurred when we removed the drop, hip ceiling. The original wide board, painted a green-grey was afixed to the bottom of the beams which are 22-feet above the floor. Sometime in recent history, white office tiles were attached to this planking. Removal of the ceiling began with the removal of the office tiles, then the planking, and finally the nail boards between the beams. Surprisingly, the large gothic window and small stained glass windows above the entry were completely concealed by both the attic and the concrete slurry on the wall. We revealed these windows and now light streams through the stained glass for the first time since construction.
The windows that we uncovered while removing the concrete posed a real dilemma. We had to decide what to do with a window that no longer serves as a window. After the original 1889 construction, later additions were added on the other side of these windows, which is why they were filled with brick and covered. We designed screens with a repeating Venitian Cross (quatrefoil) that we adopted from the chandeliers that hung in the sanctuary and are now in Little Bird Lounge, and hung these screens over the now color-selectable opening. We restored the original window openings and lit them from behind the screens.
After removing the cement slurry on the walls, we also discovered that the two doorways entering into the hall from the vestibule had been shifted to the center of the room. The arched brick header revealed the original location and we returned the entry to those two locations. For the church, one entry was used by the men and one for women, though couples rejoined upon entering the sanctuary. Of course, we used all original bricks in the process.
And yes, when we removed the concrete wall slurry, we did find the jagged brick patch where the transept was added in 1905, and we did find the patched brick where the balcony was once supported.
In addition to the reconstruction, we added our signature design elements. The six flying saucer-like chandeliers are Poulson factory lights that we ordered from France in a Clementine gold. And the audio, video and other lighting is too much to discuss in this article but is state of the art.
After
Today, Adelaide Hall is an approximately 2,800 sf room that tends to take people's breath away when they see it for the first time.
Any antique structure requires changes from time to time, and in 2020 we covered the original heart pine floors with hickory. We tried to preserve the pine floors, but they had become brittle over time and in the 1800s subfloors were not used, so the brittleness of the wood became a real hazard. The hickory floors are harder, are stained the same color as the original floors, and now use the heart pine as the subflooring.
