The Whitney first opened in 1879 and operated in its early days as the J.H. Needless wagon and carriage factory. In 1931, Edward A. Boss, the owner of the Boss Hotel System, dramatically altered the building into a hotel, making additional enhancements including the addition of a third story and a remodeled primary entrance. The adaptation of the building into a hotel during the Great Depression reflected an economical approach to filling a local void for clean and comfortable accommodations. After being used as a hotel through the mid-1970s, the building was sold to the Iowa Rehabilitation Center, which housed recovering alcoholics in the rooms that once hosted overnight motorists and local community groups. In more recent years, the building had been utilized for apartments, with a restaurant occupying the coffee shop area on the first floor until it became vacant in 2016.

The M. Swift & Sons Company Historic District was founded and constructed between 1887 to 1948 in Northeast Hartford, CT. The district’s factory complex, called Swift Factory, consisted of five interconnected buildings and two historic residences. The Swift Factory once functioned as the home of the M. Swift & Sons Company throughout its over one-hundred-year story, making it a significant component of the City’s industrial heritage. Over its history, the products manufactured at the site included gold and silver leaf, hot dye stamping foils, and gold plating products.

Once a hub of economic vitality for the community, the factory was eventually closed and has been vacant for more than a decade. A new vision for revitalization is now emerging. Together with local residents and community organizers, nonprofit Community Solutions is redeveloping the complex to capitalize on the assets of the community and address needs for high quality jobs and community services.

The Bowery project consists of six previously city-owned buildings along Akron’s downtown corridor. Among them stands the 158-foot-tall Landmark Building at the corner of Main and Bowery, which opened in 1923 as the Akron Savings & Loan Company. One of the more prominent buildings in the district, it was designed by New York architect Alfred Hopkins, who at the time was primarily known for his economical, yet complex approach to architecture, as well as his specialization in farming complexes. The buildings are located at the center of Akron’s South Main Street Historic District and played a major role in establishing the area as Akron’s primary commercial district – particularly in the rubber industry. The city of Akron was the birthplace of Goodrich, Firestone, and General Tire.

The other buildings included in the revitalization project consist of various historic shops and office buildings that once housed furniture showrooms, doctors, and jewelers, but have since sat vacant for over two decades. The Akron Civic Theater, located a few doors down from the Landmark Building, was the blocks only heartbeat for nearly twenty years.

Originally a railroad industry town during and after the Civil War, by the 1920s, Martinsburg, West Virginia became a leader in textile manufacturing, with large commercial businesses rapidly opening in the downtown corridor. The former Shenandoah Hotel is the only surviving building of its kind in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The building itself sits on the site of the Blondel Mansion, which was constructed in the early 1800s by the plantation owner and Haitian Revolution refugee Anthony Blondel. The home was purchased for $45,000 in 1923 after his death and subsequently torn down. Local community investors raised $600,000 to build the Shenandoah Hotel, a luxurious 104-key boutique hotel that opened to the public on George Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1926. Located in the heart of Martinsburg, the hotel became a cornerstone of Martinsburg’s social scenes, making it a popular destination for tourists and celebrities.

The hotel featured a “Crystal Dining Room” which could seat up to 175 people and a “Gold Ball Room” for dancing and events. The spaces were specifically designed to complement guests’ gowns. The hotel also included a coffee shop and six rentable storefronts that faced Queen Street and two storefronts that faced Martin Street. The hotel eventually changed hands and became the Gateway Inn during the 1960s, where it remained for about 20 years. However, transfers in ownership eventually saw the permanent closing of the hotel space and the eventual shuttering of the first-floor commercial use. The building has remained largely vacant since.

The building that would become the Rail & Commerce building was originally built in 1925 as a three-story sorting facility for the United States Postal Service’s (“USPS”) Railway Mail Service (“RMS”). Located along the former Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, the facility was designed by W.T. Krausch, an engineer who worked for the railroad. The RMS played a central role in America’s postal system from the Civil War through the 1970s.

The RMS reached its height in the 1930s before succumbing to a gradual decline induced by shifts to airline and truck mail transport. The slowly diminishing importance of the RMS led to a declining demand for the Omaha sorting facility building. In 1956 the USPS converted the building from a sorting facility into a storage facility, and then finally abandoned the building in the mid-1970s. Prior to its current renovation, the building had largely remained vacant since the USPS’ departure and at one time was slated for demolition and condemned by the City of Omaha.

In the 1880s, the founding members of Angier Avenue Baptist held Sunday school classes out of a “small wooden structure known as the Oak Grove School.” At this time, East Durham had not yet been incorporated into the city of Durham. It was a separate town with its own officials and did not yet have electricity, running water, or paved streets. In search of a permanent location for the church, the founders decided that the intersection of Angier Avenue and Driver Street would be the location for their new church. It was completed in 1889 and lit with kerosene lamps and heated with coal-burning stoves. The sanctuary was further expanded in 1924 and remained a community fixture for nearly a century.

The project also includes the revitalization of three additional storefront buildings lining the central thoroughfare. They’ve hosted many local businesses since they were originally constructed in the 1920s but have been vacant or underutilized for years. The parish experienced declining memberships in recent years, and the building was purchased along with the neighboring buildings by Self-Help Credit Union, a locally headquartered member-owned mission-driven credit union, nonprofit loan fund, and policy advocacy organization.

Over-The-Rhine (“OTR”) is one of the country’s largest, most intact, nineteenth-century urban historic districts and is believed to contain the nation’s largest contiguous collection of nineteenth-century Italianate Architecture. While the specific details of the eight buildings included in the Jobs Cafe at Findlay Market project aren’t fully known, most of OTR’s ornate brick buildings were originally built by German immigrants from 1865 to the 1880s.

The neighborhood has suffered from significant neglect in preserving the historic heritage of the community and its economic condition. Since 1930, approximately half of OTR’s historic buildings have been destroyed, and in 2006, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named OTR one of the eleven most endangered historic places in America.

The Project was originally home to Niagara Machine and Tool Works (NM&TW) that built stamping presses and press brakes for sheet metal. Its equipment was shipped to automobile and appliance manufacturers worldwide. NM&TW’s facility consists of three distinct contributing buildings related to specific functions of the manufacturing facility and the factory evolution: the Headquarters and Main Factory, built in multiple building campaigns from 1910-1981, the Pattern Shop, built in 1913, and the Metal Fabricating Plant, built in 1953. The Headquarters, the Main Factory, and the Pattern shop are what makeup Northland Central. The multiple building campaigns consist of a continuous series of irregular masses and volumes that were added as capacity, technology, and manufacturing needs were required. Depending on the time construction took place, the spaces vary in style and design from utilitarian industrial, ceremonial, and purely utilitarian. NM&TW was sold to a London-based international manufacturing company in 1992 and most of the company’s manufacturing activities ceased around 1999 and the buildings remained vacant.

The Owosso Michigan National Guard Armory was constructed in 1915. During World War I, Company M deployed from the Armory for France. These soldiers took part in the Battle of Argonne-Seuse and were among the first American troops to set foot on German soil during the war. By mid-century, the Armory was home to the 144th National Guard unit. In addition to housing the 144th, the Armory served as a community space by hosting debates, prize fights, weddings, and artists including Grand Funk Railroad and Alice Cooper. In 2007 the 144th left the nearly century-old building for a modern facility and the Armory has been vacant since. The Armory is located in the Owosso Downtown Historic District.