Hilton team finds treasures in Loyalty Building

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Hilton Garden Inn Milwaukee

People who renovate century-old buildings expect the unexpected.

Venturing forth without a map is standard practice. Historical buildings do not often have blueprints to show what’s ahead, behind or, in the case of Milwaukee’s Loyalty Building-turned-Hilton Garden Inn, beneath the floors.

“As is the case with many older buildings, drawings of existing conditions were not available,” said Richard Pierce, principal engineer for Pierce Engineers Inc.

Even so, Pierce said, he found it puzzling when standard structural tests showed some of the building’s floors could not support a hotel. The enormous granite landmark, after all, had stood up against the weight of commerce for 125 years.

The six-story building was constructed in 1886 to for Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. and has projected a sense of grand stability at 611 N. Broadway ever since. First Hospitality Group Inc., a Rosemont, Ill.-based hotel developer and operator, began converting the office space into a 127-room hotel in 2011.

Sometimes, Pierce said, the original designer’s floor/beam interactions cannot be accounted for. So, to solve history’s mystery about the floors, engineers commissioned a full-scale load test that revealed the building’s unique structural system is able to hold double the load required.

The decision to load-test was pivotal, and not only saved the floors and the ceilings, but also let designers preserve many of the original interior spaces, Pierce said.

Keeping history intact was a priority because the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings. The State Historic Preservation Office, National Park Service and the city of Milwaukee were involved to ensure compliance with federal standards for rehabilitation.

“This project was one of the most challenging and rewarding projects I have ever worked on,” said Roman Szymberski of Stevens Construction Corp.

The design-build team, he said, peeled back a century of office space remodel jobs, with each layer representing possible hazardous materials and potential work stoppages.

But there were treasures, such as a skylight when a ceiling was removed, a five-story vault structure with hand-painted doors and an intact antique glass sign from the building’s first barber shop.

“The workers realized they weren’t just doing another interior build-out,” Szymberski said, “but they were creating beauty.”

Eleven months after construction began, the renovation revealed a hotel wired for convenience amid yesterday’s historical flourish.

“The day the scaffolding came down on the exterior,” said David Plank, project manager for Kahler Slater, “I just stared at the building and said, ‘Wow.’”

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