The Coke & Gas Works Building: Adaptive Re-Use - Stanley Office of Architecture

In the year 1900, a quarry in Nelson BC used three kegs of blasting powder to swiftly extract granite from a rocky hillside. The blast yielded a pile of stone that was twenty feet high, landing mere feet away from a train trestle. The granite was then laboriously chiselled into two foot wide building blocks. In a nearby forest, massive fir trees were felled, milled and fashioned into forty foot trusses. Stone and timber coming together to construct the newly conceived Nelson Coke & Gas Works Building.

Adjacent to the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Nelson Coke & Gas Works Building allowed the company to easily import coal from Crowsnest Pass and export its byproducts of coke, tar and roofing pitch throughout the western provinces. The building was a critical piece of urban infrastructure, casting Nelson as a major economic center in the Kootenay Region. In 1978, the Coke & Gas Works Building was the first in Nelson to be designated as a heritage structure, initiating the City’s long standing commitment to preserving its urban and industrial heritage.

Over the years, several renovations and alterations to the building had muddled and shrouded its rugged, honest beauty. The building’s granite walls and its timber trusses had been covered by drywall.

The strategy for this adaptive re-use project (which included an expansion of a veterinary hospital and introduction of three new residential suites) was to unearth the building’s true, authentic nature. To strip away the layers. To remove rather than to add. To reveal the building’s original materials. Timber beams and columns were stripped of their drywall cloaks, granite walls were uncovered and meticulously repointed, and previously enclosed timber truss ‘attic’ spaces were opened up to become loft style bedrooms.

This adaptive re-use project breathes new life into the building by uncovering its storied past.