Robert Barker/University Photography

Sage Hall, built in 1875, is now a high-tech home for the Johnson Graduate School of Management.

The move of the Johnson Graduate School of Management into its new location in Cornell University's venerable Sage Hall marks a milestone in adaptive reuse of historic buildings. The project team was led by The Hillier Group of Princeton, N.J.

The building dates back to 1875, when it opened as the Sage College for Women, part of Cornell's then-radical experiment in coeducation, making it a landmark in the history of higher education in the United States. It is also architecturally important as a key example of Victorian Gothic architecture, roughly modeled on Oxford's University Museum, according to Alan Chimacoff, A.I.A., principal with The Hillier Group. Its architect, Charles Babcock, whose best-known work is Wall Street's landmark Trinity Church, was the first professor and dean of architecture at Cornell.

In recent decades, the building aged poorly, with structural problems that included a failing exterior wall and floor trusses. Equally important, it did not meet modern fire-resistance standards. After considering several options, the university settled on a reconstruction of Sage to house the Johnson School, which had outgrown its facilities in Malott Hall and was looking for a new home.

The challenge for the renovators was in putting the 145,000-square-foot facility the Johnson School required within the footprint of the 104,000-square-foot 19th century building. The solution was to preserve and restore the U-shaped building's distinguished brick exterior and to completely gut and rebuild the interior.

Gaining the additional space required two major changes: The building's

shallow foundations were deepened and a new basement was excavated to accommodate lecture halls. Second, the open part of the U was enclosed with a new wing, creating an enclosed courtyard, which was covered with a glass roof to form an atrium.

Engineering the construction of a completely new building inside the historic walls began with the erection of an exoskeleton of 45-foot towers employing a system of struts and whalers to prop up the wall from the exterior to ensure it would not collapse during construction. Once the exterior had been braced, the interior of the building was detached and demolished. Next came excavation of the shallow crawl space beneath the old building. Special precautions had to be taken, including constructing new foundations beneath existing ones, to avoid undermining the four-foot deep foundations supporting the original walls while digging the new, 16-foot-deep basement.

Robert Barker/University Photography

Sage Hall interior.

When the foundation was set, erection of a structural steel frame for the new interior began. One complex problem was fitting a new, square structure inside the irregular historic walls. The old walls were literally glued to the new, load-bearing interior frame. Holes were drilled into the inside of the brick wall, filled with epoxy, and renovation anchors-- foot-long threaded steel rods-- were inserted and attached to the frame.

Once the walls were reattached, restoring them to their original luster was the next step. The renovation and reconstruction faithfully preserve the exterior walls of historic Sage Hall, including replacement of a spire lost in a storm decades ago. The existing facades and mansard roof have been restored to their original splendor. Mortar joints were replaced, the brick and masonry washed and all wood trim revived. The original intricate brickwork, red granite columns with carved limestone capitals featuring the flora of the Ithaca area, arched windows and slate roof and gables have been retained.

Although the modern additions are done in the spirit of the original design, they employ contemporary designs and materials to distinguish them from the original, historic faade. The conservatory eliminated in the 1920s has been replaced in modern form, with its natural light illuminating the Johnson School library.

Natural light is an important element in the building. The courtyard space created by the enclosure was covered to create a glass-roofed atrium that serves as the social center of the school and provides natural light to the interior-facing offices. Even the underground lecture halls enjoy natural lighting through translucent bricks in the atrium floor.

Inside the restored exterior, a completely modern facility that includes fiber-optic wiring for every classroom seat was created. The building is completely networked, with high-bandwidth fiber optics forming the school's nervous system, linking every office, classroom, student laboratory, special research area and the library.

Classrooms are wired for two-way distance learning, with cameras, projectors, network feeds and phone lines. Printers, scanners and digital cameras are available for faculty, student and staff use, together with multimedia digital video editing facilities.