640 Magazine Street Apartments
New Orleans, LA
AQ Studios worked closely with the W.M.B. Reily Company to transform their old coffee roasting factory and offices into 35 high-end apartments with 12,000 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor. The apartments at 640 Magazine showcase the existing heavy timber and coffee stained concrete structure that makes the bones of the historic building.
Tucked away on the roof are three penthouse apartment additions that conform to the strict requirements of the National Parks Service and the Historic District Landmarks Commission in New Orleans. The penthouses are setback on the roof so that the essential form of the historic property is unimpaired while the modern storefront windows differentiate it from the historic building.
AQ Studios also designed adjoining 618 Magazine Street, which provides 293 much needed parking spaces to the neighborhood. 618 Magazine also features 5,000 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor. The parking garage is clad to fit in seamlessly with the surrounding historic warehouse district buildings.
Awards & Accolades
- 2019 Louisiana Landmarks Society Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation
The Challenge
Located on a beautiful corner of the Warehouse District, is the W.M.B. Reily Company’s historic coffee roasting factory and offices. When the time came for them to transform the warehouse into hotel apartments, we stepped in to help them maximize the potential of the existing heavy timber and coffee-stained concrete structure that makes up the bones of the building. Here the challenge was not only incorporating both unique structural systems of the building that were added onto over time, but also incorporating penthouse additions on each of the existing flat roofs to further expand the footprint of the building in a way that the National Park Service, State Historic Preservation Office, and Historic District Landmarks Commission would find appropriate.
The AQ Solution
When seeking to add penthouse additions while simultaneously capitalizing on historic tax credit funding, the first thing we look at is visibility because the governing bodies that regulate these incentives find that penthouses are only approvable when they’re not visible from the public right-of-way and don’t take away from the historic context. Any building that is on a corner is inherently harder to gain penthouse approval for since the field of view is larger. Ultimately, we designed penthouses that are setbacks on the roof so that the essential form of the historic property is unimpaired while the modern storefront windows differentiate it from the historic building below.