The New St. Thomas Aquinas Church - pt.2

This is the second and final chapter in our blog series about the construction of the new St. Thomas Aquinas Church on Alderman Road.

When construction of the new church began, our team started planning for the integration of steel, concrete, and modern mechanicals with traditional stone, brick, and copper. The first big challenge came in the form of the wettest weather in Charlottesville’s history. Despite an unprecedented number of unworkable days due to mud and water, the site was finally prepared and the foundations were poured. Next, the building’s steel frame was erected to support the massive dome over the completely open worship hall, requiring precision crane work.

To create the church’s detailed Romanesque exterior, red brick was laid in rounded arches, curved walls, and other custom ornamental bond patterns. Alexander Nicholson is especially grateful for our relationship with M3 Masonry, who carried out the beautiful work under our direction. They battled freezing temperatures to complete the church’s exterior and keep the project moving forward. To enclose the building, our partner Lynch Roofing installed the largest copper roof in Charlottesville. Their amazing work features an octagonal dome capped by a copper cupola, as well as a completely rounded copper half-dome covering the church’s apse. The unusual geometries required days of custom work executed by hand. 

On the interior, Dan and Calvin managed a massive team of subcontractors, both local and international. Our partners at PD Interiors supplied and carefully installed synthetic stone at the church’s archways and columns. The lightweight material allowed for dramatic Romanesque shapes that would’ve been impossible to create in solid stone. Rugo Stone, who supplied the hand-carved capitals for the Rotunda at the University, provided genuine Italian marble for a number of interior furnishings at St. Thomas Aquinas, including the beautifully carved altar and ambo at the head of the worship space. 

Worthington Architectural Millwork built intricate niches for Catholic imagery, as well as massive paneled cabinets for the church’s organ pipes. Alexander Nicholson’s own carpenters completed a significant portion of the detailed interior finishes. In the center of the building, the octagonal dome was painted with gilded stars on a bright blue sky, making for a surreal experience that recalls Jefferson’s plans for mapping constellations on the dome of the Rotunda. In the Church’s words, the overall visual experience “lifts the mind and heart to god.” 

Even for those not affiliated with Catholicism, or even Christianity, the experience is awe-inspiring and sublime. Beautiful spaces are universally meaningful and uplifting. This building is a wonderful expression of Alexander Nicholson’s belief that “craftsmanship matters.” We are incredibly proud to have contributed to such an important local structure. Our team is passionate about catering to the exacting needs of each of our customers, but we especially enjoy building for our community. The new St. Thomas Aquinas church will serve over 4000 Catholic students and professors at UVA. Calvin Johnson, our superintendent, said that the construction of St. Thomas Aquinas was the most challenging project of his career. “But,” he added, “it was definitely the most rewarding.” 

At the Church’s dedication ceremony on September 20th, 2020, our own Dan Fagan was asked to enclose a relic in the church’s marble altar, marking the official completion of the project and the beginning of a new chapter for the Church, as well as for Alexander Nicholson. We look forward to our next challenge, our next opportunity to partner with the local Catholic community, and our next chance to make a difference in Charlottesville. 

If you would like to learn more about the church, the design, and it’s dedication day, please visit their website https://stauva.org/our-church-building .

The New St. Thomas Aquinas Church - pt.1

Alexander Nicholson recently completed construction of a new church for St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish in Charlottesville. Head south on Alderman Road towards the University - a copper dome and cupola rise from the hilltop. After years of gradual expansion on the site, this is the University Parish’s final church. We built it with eternity in mind. It will serve UVA’s catholic congregation forever. The striking new building is the culmination of our decades-long relationship with the local Catholic community. 

This is the first in a two part blog series about the construction of the new church.

Alexander Nicholson’s relationship with the Catholic community started in the late 90’s, when our founders were hired to build the first phase of what became Charlottesville Catholic School. In the subsequent three decades, we’ve expanded the school to include a chapel, gym, STEM lab, art room, and music room, all designed to serve more than three hundred students. 

In 2013, Alexander Nicholson was given the opportunity to build a Priory across the street from the original St. Thomas Aquinas Church on Alderman Road. Inspired by the cloistered monasteries of Medieval Europe, the building provides living, worship, and study space for eight Dominican Friars. The traditional architectural style represented a shift from the modernism of the original St. Thomas church, and hinted at the direction of future construction. 

The old St. Thomas Aquinas

The Priory

A few years later, the University Parish consulted with Train Architects, a frequent collaborator of ours, on the feasibility of renovating and updating the existing St. Thomas Aquinas church building to house a larger congregation. With the help of Train, the congregation and leadership soon realized they had loftier ecclesiastical aims. One parishioner had a personal connection with the recently revived practice of Cram and Ferguson Architects, a Boston firm that spurred a national craze for religious architecture and traditional hand-craftsmanship over a century ago. (Cram and Ferguson guided construction at West Point, Princeton, Virginia Military Institute, and Virginia Tech, as well as hundreds of churches across the nation including St. John the Divine and St. Thomas in New York City.) Inspired by the firm’s fabulous historical work, the University Parish commissioned Cram and Ferguson to design a church for the ages. Train Architects would act as the architect of record, and Alexander Nicholson would carry out construction. 

The final design for the new St. Thomas Aquinas church was informed by local history, Catholic tradition, and constant technical input from Train Architects and Alexander Nicholson. Every notable building that goes up in the vicinity of the University of Virginia is subjected to unprecedented architectural scrutiny. The American Institute of Architects considers the Rotunda and Academical Village “the greatest achievement in American architecture.” Complete imitation has never really been accomplished, flagrant disregard has always been met with pushback, and aiming for the middle has produced middling, forgettable results time and time again. St. Thomas Aquinas church posits a new solution: Romanesque architecture.

The Romanesque’s visual vocabulary of domes and arches, a stylistic relative of the University’s classicism, sits well in the Charlottesville context, while still serving the church’s ecclesiastical mission of “expressing beauty, permanence, and transcendence. Red brick, light-colored cast stone trim, and an octagonal dome are meaningful and striking elements for a traditional European church, but they’re also subtle offerings to Mr. Jefferson, gently reflecting the church’s mission to serve the University. The cruciform plan, carved tympanum, and domed apse fit into Charlottesville’s architectural tradition when rendered in familiar materials by Alexander Nicholson’s best local trade partners. With thorough planning and methodical process, we were able to construct a thousand-seat church at the edge of Grounds.

Achieving such meaningful architectural results required extensive management and oversight. While Cram and Ferguson led the aesthetic direction of the project, Charlottesville’s Train Architects turned design drawings into working drawings. Bill Adams and Tom Keogh carefully reviewed, thought-out, and drew every single detail of the building, from steel framing to wood trim to mechanical equipment. Beautiful ideas were distilled into beautiful technical solutions. In this initial planning phase, Dan Fagan, one of Alexander Nicholson’s two Principals, and Calvin Johnson, our most senior Superintendent, provided preconstruction services. Their experience in the world of large-scale commercial contracting helped the team review constructability within scheduling, pricing, and logistical constraints. They also consciously laid the foundation for a positive, trusting relationship between themselves, the client, and the architects. Dan and Calvin would be personally committed to this project for the next two years. 

Next week, we’ll be back with the second chapter in our series on St. Thomas Aquinas church. Don’t forget to check back for an in-depth look at the lavish interiors of the worship space.

New Life for an Old Barn

There’s something about Charlottesville. Once you’ve lived here, walked the Lawn, and seen the Blue Ridge, you’re part of a community, and you’ll always be able to call this place home. It’s a story we hear from so many clients. They came back to raise a family. They came back for retirement. Or they never left. They feel a connection to Virginia, to Charlottesville, and to the red brick, the standing seam, the rustic barn, or the front porch. The enduring architecture that dots our landscape is part of the experience. It’s a unique blend of southern charm, rural vernacular style, and local creative initiative.  

In the Spring of 2020, a new client reached out to us with a familiar vision. They’d bought a farm west of town. They wanted to turn it into a “generational property.” Somewhere their family could always call home. 

It just so happened that their new farm was already a generational property for Alexander Nicholson. Thirty years ago, our founders added a farm manager’s apartment onto an old horse barn set in the rolling hills of the property. 

Now, the new owners saw potential in the original section of the barn. With a little work, they knew it could be a gathering place for their grown children and extended family -  a place to drink, eat, sleep, read, and be together for the holidays. In this new golden age of Virginia libations, party barns and event barns are de rigueur - Alexander Nicholson has built several - but this would be our most ambitious barn conversion yet. The clients were passionate about preserving the historic character and rustic feel of the barn while seamlessly integrating luxurious finishes, light-filled spaces, and modern amenities. 

When an owner has such a bold vision - that creative spark so often found in Charlottesville - the selection of a good architect is imperative. Design professionals partner with you to capture your dreams, and partner with us to bring them to fruition. For this project, the owners selected Tom Flach of Kohlmark Flach Architects - someone we hadn’t worked with before. With creative input from the owners every step of the way, Tom drew brilliant plans for a restored barn with hidden rooms, salvaged wood, and dramatic expanses of glass. There would be a room for whiskey, a room for wine, and room for the whole family to gather. 

Such a detailed project demanded skilled hands and traditional construction experience; we brought in Garrett Irwin (left) as Superintendent and Max Henderson (right) as Project Manager. Garrett is a master carpenter and conscientious team leader. Max has a lifetime of experience managing the construction of homes in Virginia. Together, they helped guide the owners through the entire renovation process. For Garrett and Max, every detail had to exceed the owner’s expectations, as well as those they set for themselves.

The project started with an entire week of concrete demolition. Garrett and his team took three hour shifts on the jackhammer, removing an 8-inch thick slab of concrete on the ground floor. Next came the careful removal of the original siding, as well as the 1 ¾” thick oak boards that lined the interior of the barn. We saved both for re-use. With the barn down to its frame, we could fully assess its structural integrity. 

As with any historic building, oddities and out-of-date building techniques had to be sympathetically addressed. With the help of Steve Barber of DMWPV Engineers, we removed and replaced both gable ends of the barn, and reframed the entire second floor hayloft to create the family’s new gathering space. A structural collar was added, belting in the weight of the new second floor. Structural beams and columns were installed to make way for massive new window openings. 

With the barn stabilized, cleaned, and inspected, it was time for the owners’ vision to come to life. New glass entry doors let light in from each end of the barn, which is refracted through the dark bars and beams of the original horse stalls. We poured and polished a new concrete slab on the first floor - a classed-up homage to the original. The entryway opens into a hallway of original horse stalls, which define the new floor plan. To the left, a floating stairway is made from massive reclaimed wooden beams. Above, the original hay bale loft was repurposed as a balcony, complete with its original bale lift pulley as a decorative element. 

Down the hall and behind an original sliding door, one horse stall became a whiskey room. It features a copper sink, copper shelving, and a private bar built from reclaimed wood. Opposite is the “tack room,” an elegant restroom with equestrian inspiration and custom cabinetry built from more reclaimed wood. In the back, there’s a guest bedroom with bunks made from salvaged structural beams, closets behind hidden doors, and a wine cellar in the hallway. Throughout the entire first floor, walls are covered with the thick oak boards we salvaged at the beginning of the project. Instead of putting them back exactly as we found them, we flipped them over, concealing the worn, painted, horse-kicked side and revealing beautiful raw patinated wood that’d been preserved behind the wall for 70 years. 

On the second floor, the dark, whiskey-tinged tones of aged wood give way to a bright, airy living loft with space for the entire family. White clapboards cover the walls and roof eaves. It’s a dramatically light-filled room interspersed with rustic details. Reclaimed floors from The Heartpine Company match a few original structural timbers at the edges of the space. The entire loft is open, flowing out into the landscape at each gable-end through massive arched windows. 

Under one roof eave, facing you as you reach the top of the stairs, there’s a lush kitchen in shades of white, cream, and gold. Beyond the antique dining table in the center of the room, a wood stove and small sitting area are tucked into a triple dormer window. On the opposite side, two sets of French doors open onto a pair of crows-nest balconies that overlook the property. Between the two balconies is one of the owner’s most ingenious ideas: a jewel-box powder room disguised as a fresh stack of birch firewood.

For a single open loft, the owner and architect managed to create intimate spaces for every family member and for every situation. Refuge from the weather by a fire, outlook over the landscape, tucked-away nooks for reading, and the reassuring feeling of being sheltered by the strong, traditional frame of the barn roof. Combined with the highly detailed first floor, the space offers a rich experience for an individual or a large group. It demands that time be spent exploring and enjoying the architecture and the land. It’s a fitting landmark on a property that the family hopes to always call home. 

Every detail of this project required the exacting attention of our team and our subcontractors. Unusual materials, tight spaces, complicated framing, and massive windows made for daily challenges and daily rewards for everyone involved. We are proud of our work, stand by our craftsmanship, and wish the family generations spent together in their beautiful barn. 

As a Charlottesville community builder, we are passionate about creating special spaces for local families. If you’re interested in starting your own project, please reach out to us. We’d be honored to help you every step of the way. 

Light House Studio: Expanded Community Engagement

Light House Studio is a Charlottesville non-profit organization that offers filmmaking classes to young people, empowering them with the skills and confidence to thrive as storytellers and citizens. Alexander Nicholson is proud to have contributed to their effort. We recently completed a contemporary three-story addition at Light House Studio’s Vinegar Hill Theater.

Alexander Nicholson has spent several years rejuvenating Light House Studio’s downtown headquarters. The new addition, the final stage of our transformative project, takes advantage of a steeply sloped site overlooking the intersection of Water Street and Ridge Street. Two levels of learning space are tucked into the hillside behind a new glass entrance hall. Inside, a dramatic industrial stairwell leads to a pair of classrooms that feature a permanent greenscreen, numerous computer stations, and areas for creative collaboration. A third-floor terrace offers young filmmakers a dedicated spot for outdoor shots and elevated views of the city.

 The thoughtful building expansion was envisioned by Wolf / Ackerman Architecture + Design, a local firm with a commitment to community service. Their team specified materials and construction techniques that balanced Light House Studio’s functional and creative needs. Alexander Nicholson was happy to work with a trusted design partner to bring the project to life.

Several months after beginning construction on the addition, the reality of the coronavirus pandemic set in. Project Manager Drew Dunnington was faced with significantly extended material lead-times, and the responsibility of managing the health of everyone on site. Careful scheduling decreased exposure risk and kept the project on track.

With the new spaces now ready for primetime, Light House Studio will be able to expand its influence, offering filmmaking classes to more young people than ever before.  

If you’re interested in building in the community, reach out to us!