The preservation of the historic building at 5200 Dauphine St. continues its legacy. Once the location of a commercial store and popular gathering place for 9th Ward residents, a new building is being resurrected as a community center built in part with materials from the original structure. Hal Collums Construction completed the deconstruction phase (click link for story) to salvage the material, and Central City Millworks joined in the reconstruction phase by manufacturing the building’s custom windows.
As mandated by LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and in conjunction with the New Orleans Preservation Resource Center and Historic Green, all the windows are to be fabricated from the salvaged original heart pine. The photo to the right shows those timbers being re-sawn in our 30,000 sq ft mill shop.
Central City Millworks is contracted to fabricate the energy efficient windows as part of a joint venture with the Preservation Resource Center’s mill shop. The photo to the left shows a mock-up window manufactured by Vito Ingerto, the PRC Mill Manager.
While the windows had to use the old, salvaged materials, they had to perform on par with the most weather sealed modern windows.
We worked with architect Wayne Troyer 
and with PRC consultant Bill Robinson on the details, and then created our shop drawings. Mr. Robinson recommended modern weather striping materials that would work with a time-tested counter weighted sash design.
The material specified was a polyurethane wrapped foam. It had modern materials that perform great in compression and sliding operations.
Rough Mill Operator, Daniel Bell, got the heart pine ready for the custom window design that is producing a finished window that operates smoothly–almost effortlessly–while being extremely weather tight. The compression seal prevents air infiltration, and more importantly, conditioned air outfiltration.
Read another article about this New Orleans green building project as featured in the Design for Reuse Primer, a free publication funded by the US Green Building Council.
