Bon Ton Hatters was once a bonafide Birmingham staple for swanky hat and shoe lovers. Located in a bustling area of downtown, the hat repair and shoe shine shop was always filled with customers in its heyday. Constantine Callis and his son, Jimmy Callis, opened the shop in 1907 on the 206 20th Street North in the Roden Block building. When Jimmy Callis eventually retired and passed the reins over to his son, Jimmy Callis Jr, the shop continued forging ahead, although its peers in business struggled to stay alive. In 1979, Bon Ton Hatters relocated to 219 20th Street, and it eventually became the only shop in the city where a hat could be properly cleaned and reshaped.
In 2016, Jimmy Callis Jr decided to finally retire after fulfilling his promise to his father to keep Bon Ton Hatters open past the century mark. His shop was one of the only retail stores in the area as the bar and restaurant scene gradually engulfed downtown Birmingham. This trend is not uncommon. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy’s 2018 Small Business Profile report for Alabama, retail small businesses account for only 10% of small businesses in Alabama. In Jefferson County, small businesses account for between 18% to 48% of employment. With the devastating economic effects brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the future of small business appears bleak. In a survey of 860 Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses alumni, conducted Sept. 1-2 2020, 88% of the small business owners say they had used all of their Paycheck Protection Program loan funding. However, with its tight-knit community of business owners and dedicated patrons, Birmingham is well-positioned for a rebound.
Along with the ever changing retail landscape comes opportunities to repurpose the empty spaces in ways that still manage to add value to the community. The former Bon Ton Hatters building now serves as a multi-tenant Airbnb suite while maintaining the ground floor’s use for retail — Airbnbs create favorable circumstances for extra economic activity resulting from an increase of travelers to the city as short-term rental lodgings become more available.
Refurbishment of buildings can take a variety of forms, ranging from minor building upkeep like refreshing paint colors and updating building signage to larger-scale restorations. If buildings are in working condition but the services or technology within them are obsolete, a retrofit process may be in order. In some cases, a particular function is no longer needed and buildings may be converted to a new purpose altogether, i.e., adaptive reuse.
What qualifies a building for adaptive reuse? David Kincaid writes in his book, Adapting Buildings for Changing Uses: Guidelines for Change of Use Refurbishment:
“The potential for buildings which may appear constrained by internal configurations, shape or structure (as well as for those that are large and relatively unconstrained physically) to be adapted for a wide variety of uses is not especially limited by the space needs of a significant range of human activities. This suggests that most buildings are physically suitable for adaptation to most uses, and influenced the proposition that ‘long life – loose fit’, which was popular in the 1960s, should be a guiding principle behind most design briefs.”
Benefits of adaptive reuse include:
Environmental and economic sustainability
Hidden density
Saves time and resources through faster construction
Lower public/social costs
Additionally, older buildings provide immense cultural value by conserving aspects of its society’s history. The preservation of such buildings’ defining features ensures their original heritage is maintained and is therefore important. Take the recently renovated Iron Age building as another example. Since its inception in 1886 as a newspaper office, it has hosted a revolving door of various businesses, including the Faust Cafe, Burt's Shoes, Lee Optical, a drug store and a delicatessen. Yet from the early 1990s until 2016, the impressive building remained vacant. It has one of the only two cast-iron facades in the city, and several of the building’s original features remained untouched and/or were incorporated into the renovations. A tour through the interior would reveal an antique safe from the Herring-Hall-Marvin Company, a fire door from the building’s early days and an old elevator pulley system used during the 19th century.
The Iron Age exterior is a High Victorian Italianate style, characterized by tall extended proportions and delicate details. The cast iron supports allow for large expanses of plate glass to provide natural lighting to the structure’s inside. The second and third floor facades, behind the cast iron posts, were replaced by sheets of one-inch thick polycarbonate.The interior of the press-office was plastered in pure calcimine. The building is now home to several diverse local businesses, including AMD Creative Agency, INFLCR and Glow Beauty Lounge.
While the businesses within them may be transitory, the architectural opportunities within versatile and durable buildings remain plentiful. Adams Design Associates is dedicated to sustainability and innovation through urban repair. Be sure to check out our portfolio of urban repair projects!
References:
Bivens, J. (2019, January 30). The economic costs and benefits of Airbnb. Economic Policy Institute.
Retrieved from https://www.epi.org/publication/the-economic-costs-and-benefits-of-airbnb-no-reason-for-local-policymakers-to-let-airbnb-bypass-tax-or-regulatory-obligations/.Bon Ton Hatters. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bhamwiki.com/w/Bon_Ton_Hatters.
Davis, E. (2019, July 9). Ten benefits of adaptive reuse. Retrieved from https://www.moderncities.com/article/2019-jul-ten-benefits-of-adaptive-reuse.
Iron Age building. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bhamwiki.com/w/Iron_Age_building.
Poe, K. (2019, January 13). Bon Ton Hatters to close after more than a century in downtown Birmingham. Retrieved from https://www.al.com/business/2016/11/bon_ton_hatters_to_close_after.html.
Rabouin, D. (2020, September 9). Small businesses are losing confidence in their survival. Axios. Retrieved from https://www.axios.com/small-business-confidence-goldman-sachs-74ba6e69-ad0e-4cb5-bee3-d03445b2a30e.html.
U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy. (2018). Alabama Small Business Economic Profiles for 2018. Retrieved from https://www.sba.gov/advocacy/2018-small-business-profiles-states-and-territories.