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Little Venice at Little Juniata Creek

Little Venice at Little Juniata Creek

Duncannon, PA, United States

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Little Venice at Little Juniata Creek

Duncannon, PA, United States

Firm

Celi Design & Partners

Type

Residential › Multi Unit Housing
Commercial › Showroom
Cultural › Gallery

STATUS

Under Construction

SIZE

5000 sqft - 10,000 sqft

BUDGET

$10K - 50K

Photos

Hector Caba (instagram cuso9) (2)

Consultant Engineer: James M. Lucas, JML Structural Engineering

Little Venice, a self-financing endeavors to restore a gem found in the city of Duncannon, Pennsylvania. Among the restoration manufacture works was been addressed already in the building, like a urban bench prototype designed, an asset for Duncannon’s Borough Revitalization Project with very good acceptance; and the Red Oak fenestration framing to cover the whole back.
The last photos refer to the building in the state in which it was found before the restoration.

An interesting architectural precedent adapted to mountainous geography between streams and waterfalls, of which Frank Lloyd Write does not hesitate to bring to its maximum expression with modern concepts in its design for the Fallingwater House.

This 10,000 sqf building sitting on Little Juniata Creek, in connection with the main stream Susquehanna River, was built around 1850, with autochthon industrialized wood techniques. With three-story, wood-framed structure and two-level basement. The foundation walls are fieldstone with a concrete retaining wall adjacent to the Little Juniata Creek. The lower basement is partially excavated. The building has a mansard roof, the steep slopes of which serve as the exterior walls of the third floor. The dwelling survived due to the strength of its structure built with generous sections and noble materials, as it was a public building with a high influx of people in its early days. Although its details and ornaments refer to a sober English Architecture, from the rural architecture of barns and ranches is where inspiration and source for its original construction also was been found.

For the project, a historical search was carried out in which, with the help of bibliographic documents, it was discovered that such a prominent structure is due. The building was lodge of the leading fraternal organization of the public school built across the street (demolished), on the top floor was located an auditorium with stage and grandstand, which was transformed into a large meeting room with flat floor to lease to a local group Knights Of Pythias. With businesses on the first story and exit to the main street of the city for the time in which it was built, prior to the highways that surround and divide the neighborhood today, two foundations with solid stone walls save the height with fall in slope towards the stream.

A sudden setback in the development of the city, gradually abandoned, was due to the fact that businessmen and factories that settled around from the foundation of the city 200 years ago were closing their doors. The name of the city is due to the main supplier and local producer of iron nationwide, Duncan Iron Works & Co. Nowadays, with a high index of vacant properties, the municipality finds itself with problems to face repairs of infrastructure of the city, an extensive problem to many cities of the conurbation in the whole country.

The building, abandoned for decades, and the school across the street to whom it served demolished, the local community used the building for entertainment as a haunted house in Halloween and 20 years ago it was transformed into apartments, where the last floor used as storage is still in its original state.

Given the new regulations that, being a city founded on the banks of the river and prone to flooding, are even stricter than in the surroundings, since the plan is a general cleaning of buildings still existing between the dangerous flood zone, and the obtaining the permits for its restoration was an arduous task in which engineers and surveyors participated.

Local life, surrounded by mountains, is very quite, since in such an undertaking based on the new regulations considering the maximum flood level during the course of 100 years, most of the commercial buildings and businesses that gave life to the small community were closed, seeing today a desolate and abandoned urban landscape with very little commercial activity without having premeditated a new development where to re-locate the heart that gives life to the city, reducing it to a few concentrated commercial buildings that are still moving out of the city or still closing.

Appalachian Trial, at certain times of the year, offers the city an interesting pilgrimage of walkers, as it is a secondary street of the city a forced passage between the Cove and Peters mountains. Where hikers could enjoy panoramic views on Duncannon Town from Hawk Rock.

Little Venice, which owes its name to its location on the bank of the stream and a set of neighboring buildings that share the same situation, was a source of inspiration for the study to return to certain regulatory patterns forgotten in time and gave rise to the urban profile that today in day it can be appreciated from a dead remnant transformed into a park accompanying one of the main arteries built 50 years ago.

Aggregates of frescoes with contemporary motifs in the Italian-style ceilings in palaces and churches style provide fluidity between interior spaces that rescue the original layout transforming the transformation suffered into typical apartments to its original state of large business-spaces in the first story.

It characterizes the restoration the renovation of the solid wood used as finishing, deteriorated by severe hands of aged paint during the time in the exterior and the interiors at the moment of being covered by the new subdivision of walls when turned into typical apartments. And the improvement of latest fixture of the building routed by raining water on the creek side, in which the Studio decided to use precarious but efficient old techniques due the difficult geography.

The future of the building contemplates the fusion of residence, manufacturing, showroom and gallery.

Little by Little by Little Man, Little Venice at Little Juniata Creek, 1850s School's Lodge Restoration coming up.

Product Spec Sheet

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JML Design Concepts

Engineer James M. Lucas

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Little Venice at Little Juniata Creek

Duncannon, PA, United States

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Little Venice at Little Juniata Creek

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Product Spec Sheet

Collaborating Firms

Team

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Little Venice at Little Juniata Creek

Duncannon, PA, United States

Other Projects by Celi Design & Partners

Aeropuertos 2000, Partitions System

Alvarez's Terrace, Retreat

Perelman-Poztaruk's House

Mazza-Gravier's House Documentation

Busua Community Tourist Center

TES House (Project)

Starter House Restoration

Forrester-Cettour's House

Little Venice at Little Juniata Creek

Duncannon, PA, United States

Product Spec Sheet

Collaborating Firms

Team