The Hibernia Building was completed in 1921. The 23-story, 335-foot tall building was the tallest in Louisiana until the State Capitol building in Baton Rouge surpassed it in 1932. The building was New Orleans’ first modern skyscraper and known for its cupola, which is it in various colors for holidays throughout the year and once served as a navigational beacon for ships along the Mississippi River. The building’s original occupant, Hibernia National Bank, was founded by Irish immigrants in 1870 and took its name from “Hibernia”, which was the Latin name for the island of Ireland. Hibernia National Bank was Louisiana’s largest bank until it was bought by Capital One Bank in 2005. Following the purchase, the building’s first floor bank lobby remained in use while the upper floors, comprising 93% of the net rentable area, became vacant.

Constructed between 1917 and 1919 by the Department of Public Works as part of a larger industrial complex called the Navy Yard Annex, the Boilermaker Building was originally used to manufacture boilers for Navy ships.

The Pythian building was originally built in 1908 by Smith W. Green, who was reputed to be the richest African American in New Orleans, and one of the wealthiest in the country. It was built for the Knights of Pythias, a late 19th early 20th-century fraternal order that grew out of a Civil War-era organization, and for almost 40 years operated as the organization’s headquarters.

Pythian Temple served for several decades as a hub of the African American community, with lodge rooms, a barbershop, a theater, a bank, an opera house, and an auditorium/dance hall. Tenants through the 1940s included many African American-owned businesses, such as the Industrial Life Insurance Company of Louisiana and the Peoples Benevolent Industrial Life Insurance Company of Louisiana.

In the 1940s, the Pythian became a wartime hiring office for Andrew Jackson Higgins, who built the Higgins boats that President Eisenhower famously said “won the war.” Higgins hired men and women of all races through a single personnel office, one of the first times this had occurred in the South. The Pythian’s top floor was a double-height ceiling dance hall where soldiers and sailors could dance and hear live music before shipping out to fight in WWII. Following its WWII use, the Pythian Building was primarily used as an office. In the late 1990s, the building began falling into disrepair space before ultimately becoming vacant after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The Renaissance District project rehabilitated two of the four remaining buildings of the former South Bend Studebaker plant, a massive industrial complex that at one time consisted of over 1,400 acres and eight million square feet of manufacturing space. The Studebaker Corporation’s roots originate in the mid-1850s when the company’s namesake founders began producing wagons. Business boomed following the Civil War. At the turn of the century, the company began exploring automobile production, and by the early 1920s, it became the fourth largest automobile manufacturer in the world. Unfortunately, the company struggled during the Great Depression, and while World War II created increased demand for its products, the company finally closed in 1966.

The buildings comprising Renaissance District were built between 1923 and 1946 for auto body assembly, tool/machine shop, and truck cab production. At the facility’s peak, the campus employed over 21,200 individuals in the South Bend community but following the company’s decline had been vacant for over 50 years.

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 original Franklin Street post office headquarters and processing center was built in 1936 and provided the vast majority of postal distribution services for the Houston area. In 1960, the building was renovated and expanded in the Brutalist style that defines the majority of the existing building by Wilson, Morris, Crain & Anderson, the architects who spearheaded the creation of the Houston Astrodome. In 1984, the building was named after Barbara Jordan, the first African American state senator since 1883 and the first black woman to serve in that body. The USPS put the building up for sale and issued an RFP for its redevelopment during the peak of the 2009 financial crisis. Lovett Commercial, the project sponsor, purchased the building in 2015 and began the revitalization efforts.

The history of the Wilkins Rogers Mill complex in Ellicott City, Maryland, traces its roots back to 1774, when the Ellicott brothers built a grist mill on the banks of the Patapsco River, becoming the first in Maryland to produce flour as a commercial enterprise. The mill was also a pioneer in the region, adopting Oliver Evans’ system of mill automation, which played a key role in establishing Baltimore as one of the nation’s most successful producers of flour products. After the Panic of 1837, the mill was acquired by Charles Carroll and Charles Gambrill, with the Gambrill family continuing to operate it into the 1920s.

The original mill building, constructed in two phases from 1916 to 1918, was later expanded with the addition of a combined warehouse, laboratory, and machine shop in 1941, replacing an earlier structure destroyed by fire. This complex, which includes the main mill building, attached boiler house, nine silos, and other structures, was significantly impacted by tenants like C.A. Gambrill Mfg. Company and the Doughnut Corporation of America (DCA), who oversaw renovations following a fire in 1941.

The Wilkins Rogers Company acquired the property in 1967 and operated it until 2020. Today, the complex remains a contributing property in the Ellicott’s Mills Historic District, which was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.