Soldier On Veteran's Housing
Chicopee, MA
Old became new again as Western Builders transformed the historic Chapin School, originally built in 1897, into much-needed stable housing for veterans. The highly intricate renovation project, with a myriad of structural and code challenges, took 15 months and was completed in the Spring of 2016.
Western Builders, along with Dietz & Company Architects, turned the century-old school into 43 single-bedroom apartments with a total of 33,733 sq ft. Renovated through grants from the Massachusetts Historic Commission, the project embraced the building’s history and tastefully incorporated a number of its original architectural elements, including original classroom doors, transoms, and slate chalkboards.
To bring the building to modern-day code compliance, the project included installing an elevator and sprinkler system, and enlarging various openings. The complex project also included restructuring all apartments to be of equal size, removing chimney shafts while retaining and supporting original chimneys, filling in a stairway, concealing spaces, restoring original interior carpentry and exterior friezes, a complicated hip roof, strategically routing the sprinkler system, and conducting a 100% rake-and-repoint of all the exterior masonry.
Through Soldier On, a non-profit organization whose mission is to give shelter and additional support resources to veterans, the finished apartment building provides a limited-equity cooperative in which the residents are granted long-term leases and ownership interests.
