With its intricate molding and lustrous wooden doors, the entrance to the newly renovated Guggenheim Hall looks more like a cathedral than a math and sciences building.

Guggenheim was renovated as part of the University’s Restore the Core project, which aims to restore the beauty and integrity of select buildings on campus.

The total renovation cost about $28 million, which came from state grant money.

The UW’s goals in renovating Guggenheim were to update the building for safety and environmental reasons and to restore it to its original splendor.

“They did a lot of work bringing the building back to the style it was intended to be in,” said Lynn Catlett, an administrator for the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which is housed in Guggenheim.

Catlett described how eight or 10 years ago the main entryway doors were so sunburned that the University decided to put a yellow varnish on them. Catlett said , it wasn’t a pretty sight. The construction team worked hard to restore the intricately carved woodwork to its natural finish during the renovation.

Catlett also detailed the many parts of the building that were simply worn out.

“A lot of the composite stone had fallen apart,” she said. “The mortar between the bricks was rotten; you could walk along the ground floor and find slates that had fallen down from the roof.”

The outdated aspects of the building interfered with the work that needed to be done in it.

“Many of the people who work here use lasers, and some of them were water-cooled,” Catlett said. Because the building was not up to date with technology, she said, the flushing of toilets between class periods was enough to lower the water pressure and distort the lasers’ measurements.

“[Our department] had been here for 80 years, and there had just been minor modification after minor modification,” Catlett said. Assorted piles of unused and broken-down equipment and supplies were hidden away in various parts of the building until, she said, “It became just this warren full of dirt.”

During the renovation, many dumpsters of trash went out.

“We sent truckload after truckload of recycled materials that went to surplus and were resold,” she said.

The construction manager for the Guggenheim renovation, Bob Dillon, said the goal in renovating the building was to preserve the exterior and anything of historic value in the interior.

He said that although they gutted most of the interior, they preserved the stairways and their railings.

The first round of Restore the Core renovations brought Mary Gates Hall and Johnson Hall up to date. Renovations on Guggenheim and Architecture Hall were completed during the second phase.

The planning for the remodel started in about June of 2003, and the actual construction on Guggenheim lasted from March 2006 to July 31, 2007. During that time, faculty and classes were moved into Condon Hall, which serves as a “surge” space for departments undergoing major construction.

Guggenheim was built in 1929 and in all that time, Dillon said, it hadn’t undergone a major renovation.

The most intensive part of the renovation was a seismic upgrade to ensure that the building could better withstand an earthquake. A sheer wall was put in from the top of the building all the way down to 80 feet below the original concrete foundation, where it was secured by massive amounts of newly poured concrete.

“To put in the seismic equipment we had to tear out the ground floor,” Dillon said. “Under and around the existing foundation and up and around 80 feet, we cut a hole in the roof and popped up a mechanical space. We created a new floor on the roof.”

By pushing the mechanical equipment from the fourth floor up to the roof as a new penthouse, the construction team created 2,000 square feet of space, Dillon said.

The construction of the sheer wall presented an unexpected problem when the concrete workers went on strike just as the concrete was ready to be poured. Skanska, the construction company that also did the renovation of Johnson Hall, had to manipulate its schedule to keep from falling behind.

“Skanska was terrific,” Catlett said. “They overcame a lot.”

The concrete workers’ strike went on for about a month, during which time nothing could be done about the sheer wall concrete. But Skanska was flexible and tried to do all it could to get ahead on other parts of the project.

“We were told in the beginning that there was no flex time because we’re two of eight in Restore the Core,” Catlett said.

Once the strike ended and the concrete started flowing again, Skanska employees worked six days a week and 10 hours a day for about six weeks, Catlett recalled.

So while the construction team lost a month of concrete work, it didn’t lose a month on the job.

“The contractor worked selective overtime to make up the time lost on the strike,” Dillon said.

With Skanska’s dedication, the building came in on time and on budget. Dillon said that it was a necessity. The completion of the Guggenheim renovation directly impacted the beginning of the renovation of Clark and Savery halls, and if those had been late that would have impacted the start of the renovation on Denny and Lewis halls.

While the building did gain some space by pushing the mechanical room to the roof, some assignable space was also lost during the renovation. The construction added a new elevator and an ADA-accessible entrance, as well as redesigning the restrooms so the accessible stalls could actually accommodate a wheelchair. ADA accessibility is determined under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

There was a lot of struggle involved in the renovation, Catlett said.

“The state allocated and then cut the money. There was so much building going on that the escalation [inflation] percentage was very high. There were aspects of the plan that got cut that disappointed us.”

In addition to the seismic upgrade, Guggenheim received new mechanical and electrical equipment, was rewired for voice and data equipment and acquired some “pretty nice” new audio/visual components in the classroom, Dillon said.

“We put in all-new windows — thermal and energy-saving windows,” he said.

The building now has a lighting control system and motion detectors in the offices to make the lighting plan much more efficient.

“It’s pleasant on the inside,” Dillon said. “It was like a refinishing job you’d see done in Europe on a cathedral.”

Junior Lauren Sterling, a microbiology and public health major, had a quiz section in Guggenheim last quarter.

“It’s definitely nice to have the new paint jobs,” she said. “And the seats are definitely more comfortable than the seats in Bagley.”

She noted that there’s not much difference between the seats in Guggenheim’s auditorium and the older auditoriums in Kane, except perhaps that the seats in Kane have rips and tears in the cushions.

“They replaced the seats, but they didn’t fix some of the design flaws of the building,” Sterling said. “The staircases are too narrow and create traffic jams in between classes.”

However, that could also be attributed to “people being stupid” and students not walking on the right side of the staircase, she said.

“I love the old architecture,” she added. “I think it’s really beautiful.”

“The great thing is being in a clean new building,” Catlett said in agreement. “And everything’s working.”

[Reach contributing writer Molly Rosbach at development@thedaily.washington.edu.]