Park Synagogue was designed by world-renowned architect Eric Mendelsohn as a new home for the Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo Congregation following the community’s move to Cleveland Heights after World War II. Conceived as a modern synagogue integrating worship, education, and community life, the building is widely regarded as one of the most important examples of modern religious architecture in the United States. Its iconic copper-clad dome and sculptural concrete forms reflect Mendelsohn’s Neo-Expressionist design philosophy. Park Synagogue served as the congregation’s primary place of worship and gathering for decades.

After the congregation established a new facility in Pepper Pike in 2021, the historic building entered a new chapter, led by a development team that includes Oberlin College graduates committed to preserving Mendelsohn’s vision while reimagining the site for arts, education, and community use. 

Designed by Albert Kahn, the famed “architect of Detroit,” the McCullough Center was Ford’s first assembly plant outside of the Motor City. In its 1920s heyday, hundreds of Model T’s rolled off its lot every day. But after Ford closed the plant in 1932, the building foundered for decades, serving as a sales office, a warehouse, and office space. By the time Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) acquired the iconic 1915 building in 1981, it was already in need of considerable renovation, if not an outright overhaul.

Due to cost constraints, however, the Center’s full potential as a hub of artistic endeavor was left unrealized for 25-plus years. During this time, CIA’s campus was split between two buildings separated by a half mile of parking lot – a drab, deadening asphalt gulf that students dubbed “the Beach.”

Constructed between 1900 and 1922, Loray Mill is a nationally significant example of early twentieth-century industrial construction and one of the largest textile mills ever built in North Carolina. Originally developed for cotton cloth production, the mill was converted to tire fabric manufacturing following its acquisition by the Jenckes Spinning Company in 1919. Subsequent expansions in 1921 and 1922 reflected the mill’s growing role in regional industrial production and its contribution to Gastonia’s emergence as a textile hub known as “Spindle City.” 

Loray Mill is also historically notable as the site of the 1929 Loray Mill Strike, which involved more than 1,000 workers and brought national attention to labor conditions in the Southern textile industry. The strike was driven in part by the “stretch-out,” a management practice that increased worker workloads while reducing staffing levels. In the wake of the strike, Loray Mill closed and was later purchased by Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which operated the facility until 1993. After decades of vacancy, the property began a phased historic rehabilitation in 2013, continuing to this day. 

Constructed in 1912, the George W. Adair School is a two-story brick building located at the heart of the Adair Park neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. Adair Park, a “bungalow suburb,” was developed between the 1890s to the 1940s and features a variety of unique architectural styles, including Queen Anne and Folk Victorian, English Revival, and the predominant American Craftsman bungalows.

The George W. Adair School was designed in the Academic Gothic Revival style by Edward Dougherty, one of Atlanta’s leading architects of the time known for his works throughout Atlanta, including Druid Hills Baptist Church, Druid Hills Golf Club, Imperial Hotel, and the Highland School. For almost 60 years, it operated as both a school and a community gathering center, until enrollment began to diminish in the early 1960s. The school shut its doors in the fall of 1973 and has remained vacant and decaying ever since.

In the late 1800s, Fall River, Massachusetts, had become one of the country’s leading textile regions in America and, by the turn of the century, housed more than 1 million spindles in operation, second in the world to only Manchester, England. Originally known as the Bradford Durfee Textile School, the facility opened its doors in 1904 to provide advanced courses in textile manufacturing and chemistry to educate the rapidly growing population of local mill workers.

The school was named by the school’s original landowner, Miss Sarah S. Brayton, a descendant of local textile industry pioneer and Civil War veteran Maj. Bradford Dufree. Classes initially offered included advanced designing, electrical laboratory, motor testing, hand warping, loom, mechanical drawing, and machine shop.

The school expanded over the years and started to offer additional courses of study, eventually gaining the ability to award Bachelor’s degrees. At that point, the school’s name was changed to the Bradford Durfee College of Technology. In 1960, it merged with a neighboring technical institute to form the Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute and, in 1991, was acquired and merged with several branches of the University of Massachusetts to become UMass Dartmouth, vacating the building in the transition. A local community college briefly took over some of the space for classes but left nearly 20 years ago. The building has since sat vacant, awaiting a new use.

The 74,000 square foot, five-building campus will soon become the Creative Class Lofts and provide 44 market-rate apartments, 11 affordable apartments for practicing artists, and 23,345 square feet of commercial, community, and retail space.

Anchoring the commercial portion of the building will be the Spectrum Empowerment Project and the Youth Musical Theater Corporation (YMTC). Spectrum provides autistic adults with an alternate path to college and employment through economic independence, social growth, and creative expression. YMTC is a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization that provides young people with the opportunity to participate in theatrical experiences and produces two Broadway-style musicals each year. The building will also include a 170-seat event space/black box theater to support these groups, as well as an art gallery open to the public.

Groundwork, a Massachusetts-based coworking space provider, will be opening a new site within Creative Class Lofts after celebrating five years of successful growth in their New Bedford location. The Groundwork space will provide coworking memberships and support several local businesses, including Entrepreneurship for All (“E for All”), a year-long small business incubation program.

The Delaware Power Station of the Philadelphia Electric Company was, at its peak, Philadelphia’s largest power station in the post-World War I period and a critical component to the company’s incredible growth. Founded in 1899 and incorporated in 1902, Philadelphia Electric first formed as a corporation by consolidating many small electric utilities under a single large holding company with the goal of being the sole supplier of electricity to the city. A critical success toward the goal of standardization began in 1902 with the construction of the largest coal-powered central power plant in the world known as Schuylkill A-1. When run at full capacity, this station could generate all of the city’s electricity needs at a lower cost than what was possible through multiple smaller plants.

Within just 16 years, a site expansion, and the construction of a second station, by 1918, the company’s customer base and power needs had grown more than fivefold and continued to increase. This demand was further compounded by the industrial expansion resulting from the United States entering World War I. To meet the ever-growing needs, Philadelphia Electric began the two-phase construction of the Delaware Power Station in 1917. By 1923, the Delaware Station was in full operation and capable of generating over 46% of the city’s electricity when running at its full capacity, making it the largest power station in the Philadelphia Electric system.

Over the next several decades the company would continue to dominate the industry, constructing additional stations around the city and expanding the Delaware station once more in 1953. Although no expansions occurred after 1953, the Delaware Station continued to power a large portion of Philadelphia over the next several decades.

With the development of newer generating technologies such as nuclear power, however, the Delaware Station’s dependence on fossil fuels, both coal and oil, meant that it was becoming increasingly inefficient. By 1969, the original sections of the station were retired, leaving only the 1953 expansion in operation. Philadelphia Electric was acquired by the Exelon company in 2000 and, by 2008, the station ceased to function as a power plant. Exelon sold the station in 2015 when early development plans for the station’s future use began. Current ownership acquired the property in late 2019.

The former power station is now ‘The Battery,’ a 500,000 square foot dynamic multifamily and workplace campus experience on the Delaware River, adjacent to the heart of the bustling Fishtown neighborhood in Philadelphia, with a specific focus towards open-air, greenspace, and health and wellness.

The campus was developed in three phases, the first of which focused on two of the original historic structures, the “Boiler House” and the “Switchgear Building,” as well as an expansive public outdoor space. The Boiler House contains 239 loft and rooftop apartments, 49,000 square feet of office space on the ground floor, and a dramatic 2-story central amenity hub. Amenities include lounge, meeting, co-working, and café space with a rooftop outdoor terrace and garden. The Switchgear Building renovation created 45 studio and one-bedroom units and 25,000 square feet of event space operated by Cescaphe, a well-established event brand in Philadelphia.

The Battery lies directly adjacent to Penn Treaty Park and features a large outdoor space along the Delaware River waterfront with direct access to trails for walking/biking.