Not long ago, the Canton waterfront in Baltimore was a scruffy industrial port with a handful of neglected tourist attractions,an oil refinery, brick row houses, derelict fish-processing plants and a view of St. Casimir Church’s 100-year-old golden domes.
Today, the waterfront area is the scene of an extreme luxury makeover. The cinnamon-scented spice-manufacturing plant is gone, and luxury condo/office complexes and yacht slips abound. Although few Baltimore residents could complain about the increased tax base or the removal of abandoned factory buildings, the rapid rise of tall, modern and high-priced development raised concern among some neighbors accustomed to the traditional look of the neighborhood.
The Moorings at Canton, a 67-unit, 4-story luxury townhouse development on the waterfront, was designed to keep neighborhood protest to a minimum. Comprising 10 buildings of various sizes, the townhouses are evocative of Baltimore’s historic row houses and the industrial origins of the waterfront. They have brick façades, keystones, traditionally styled light posts, and metal roofs to help The Moorings at Canton blend in with the neighboring shipyard and Baltimore Harbor.
“We used the historical architectural images of Baltimore for reference to proportions and texture,” says Don Taylor, principal with dw taylor associates, Ellicott City, Md. “We wanted to create a community that would blend with the historic streetscapes and not stand out as a new addition to the neighborhood.”
The Moorings at Canton was the second phase of development in the waterfront area designed by dw taylor associates. The first, North Shore Townhomes, features 62 townhomes and 20 residential units on a pier whose silhouette can be seen from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Taylor designed the roofline to be distinctive, using reverse gables and standing-seam metal roofs.
Similarly, the rooflines of The Moorings at Canton feature a repetitive element of reverse gables. “Our objective was to create architecture that people think of as old Baltimore but with a little industrial twist,” he says. “We wanted it blocky, solid and dense but not dull.”
Historic Elements
The metal roof helped reinforce the neighborhood’s industrial past while features, like the cornice, metal-roofed bay windows and reverse gables, break the roofline and reflect Baltimore’s row-house heritage.
“We incorporated more reverse gables at the Moorings than at North Shore in the front and rear elevations to give the façades a more articulated look,” Taylor says. “Hopefully, this made the streetscape more dramatic and memorable. The metal roof was selected because of its distinctive look, low maintenance and long life. We also liked the strong color statement inherent with metal.”
Alliance Roofing, Baltimore, installed the roofing for both developments. “We had the panels fabricated for North Shore,” says Mark Canham, project manager for Alliance Roofing. “But because we knew that we would be doing the Moorings project, we went ahead and purchased a panel machine. There was a learning curve, but it wasn’t steep, and the machine performed well with minimal problems.”
Built in Stages
Purchasing the rollforming machine was a wise decision for this particular project; the general contractor built the project two or three buildings at a time, so eight to 12 roofing panels were installed in stages during a 10-month period. Canham was able to purchase the materials as needed and fabricate the panels in Alliance Roofing’s shop. His crew then crated the panels and loaded them on a boom truck for delivery to the site.
The Galvalume panels feature a 1 1/2-inch (38-mm) snap-lock seam and Kynar 500 coating in slate gray. The metal box gutters and downspouts are Kynar 500 coated in a sandstone color. “The color mix doesn’t sound very aesthetically pleasing but once it was together it looked pretty good,” Canham remarks.
Because the project was staggered through several months, Alliance Roofing had between four and 10 employees at any given time working on the project. “It wasn’t the kind of job you could just throw anybody at; it took some experience,” Canham notes.
Cornice Design
After construction began, Taylor asked Alliance Roofing to fabricate and install an ornate aluminum cornice at the eaves of each unit. “It is very ornate with lots of compound miter cuts, so we had another company with a lot of experience in that kind of intricate detail work fabricate it. Installing it was pretty intricate, as well,” Canham remembers. “In construction, things aren’t always true, so installing the mitered edges was time consuming. The cornices were expensive, and we wanted to keep mistakes at an absolute minimum, which meant slow and careful work up high.”
The cornice design was based on historical details found throughout Baltimore. “The cornices were installed for low maintenance and long life, particularly given the waterfront location,” Taylor explains. “The fabricator had computer-controlled equipment that can bend and shape the metal into almost any pro- file that can be drawn; we used basically a super large cove molding for the typical cornice details.”
The Moorings at Canton project was fairly large—about 1,500 squares (13,500 m2)—and had a number of details, but Canham says, “The details themselves were pretty standard; it was the multiple stages of the project that were challeng- ing.” Nonetheless, he asserts, it takes a good metal mechanic to fabricate and install these kinds of projects.
Blending upscale townhomes into an industrial, former-blue-collar waterfront neighborhood takes a little finesse. At up to 4,400 square feet (409-m2) each, the townhomes in The Moorings at Canton are outfitted more luxuriously than the Baltimore row houses that once housed employees of Canton’s shipyards. But the brick façades and reverse-gabled standing-seam metal roofs go a long way toward making the development blend into the waterfront’s skyline.
Lisa Anderson Mann writes about architecture and metal construction from Petaluma, Calif.
THE MOORINGS AT CANTON, BALTIMORE
Developer and general contractor:
Cignal Corp., Sparks, Md., www.cignalcorp. com
Architect:
dw taylor associates, Ellicott City, Md., www.dwtaylor.com
Roofing contractor:
Alliance Roofing, Baltimore, www.allroof.net
Cornice fabrication:
Architectural Trim Products, Landover, Md., (301) 583- 9676
Metal roof panels:
About 1,500 squares (13500 m²) of Sentriclad—a steel base covered with Kynar 500-coated Galvalume—distributed by N.B. Handy Co., Richmond, Va., www.nbhandy.com