A minibar replaces an office on the mezzanine. Photo © Brooke Holm

The 21-foot-high hotel lobby, lined with the original blue and white tiles, is primarily a restaurant and cocktail bar. Photo © Brooke Holm

When AAmp started work, it found the building stripped of all its modernist panache. The original blue and white tiles in the lobby were covered in beige vinyl laminate. The terrazzo floors were replaced with a brown carpet. Instead of the executive suites upstairs, “it was a rat’s nest of offices,” says Ashey. The louvers of the brises-soleil were removed and then lost in city storage. What did remain fell under historic-registry protection, leaving the architects with limited options for the conversion.

Working with local preservation specialists Ward Architecture, the designers adopted the approach of restoring the old and juxtaposing with the new. “You can’t mimic what was there, but you can’t be too different,” says Ashey. “That gives us this wonderful window to play in.” The vinyl laminate, which had the fortuitous effect of preserving the tile, was stripped, the brushed chrome railings were rejuvenated, and the carpet was replaced with new terrazzo and wood flooring. Where the bank’s original materials were cold and corporate, AAmp counterpoints with wood millwork, vibrant textiles, and bold patterns. For example, in the “all-day lobby,” which is first and foremost a restaurant, laid out with cozy banquettes and lounge tables—the primary guests’ entrance, reception desk, and elevators are tucked in one discreet corner—the designers paired the original 2-by-2 acrylic troffer lights with tall walnut-slat pendants, and a custom semicircular bar takes center stage.

To adapt the building from institutional use to hospitality, the architects parsed various strands of modernism, emphasizing material warmth and graphic dynamism, to both complement and soften Levy & Kiley’s design. AAmp’s custom flooring and fabric patterns were inspired by Brazilian modernist Roberto Burle Marx’s mosaics. Curving woodwork draws on the bentwood furniture of Alvar Aalto, while the mix of vivid colors, terrazzo, and marble recalls the Milanese Rationalism of figures like Gio Ponti.

The elevators serve as a microcosm of this design approach: original black terrazzo lines the walls of the elevator lobby, while the new cabins are clad in walnut, with oval mirrors framed in oak. The new flooring is a colorful triangle pattern. Upstairs, the same strategy is used for the rooms, each of which uniquely contorts to fit around existing structure and to align new partitions with the mullions of the aluminum curtain wall. The rooms, however, are unified by book-matched walnut millwork that houses the minibar and wardrobe and acts as a threshold between the dark green vestibules and sleeping area. The beds are rift-sawn oak with green velvet panels. “Everything we did, from the large scale of the bar and banquettes to the small scale of the millwork in the rooms, was to introduce softer edges and curves,” explains Ashey. “The formal softening of spaces is to make them more welcoming to people,” Armstrong adds.

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The elevators (1) demonstrate the same strategic mix of materials found in the rooms (2 - 4). Photos © Brooke Holm

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Throughout the hotel, there are traces of the building’s past lives. For instance, the after-hours deposit box is the backdrop for the valet stand. The entrances are all typical commercial aluminum double doors. A mail chute occupies one wall of the ground-floor elevator lobby while, in the basement, a massive steel vault door leads to the hotel’s accounting office, and a second, smaller vault door bifurcates the gym. Even the bank teller desk, now mostly buried in a wall behind banquette seating, has been repurposed as a place to set a cocktail.

A new pool, with ample lounging space, crowns the adaptive reuse. Photo © Brooke Holm

Crowning the design is the rooftop pool. More for lounging with a drink than for swimming laps, it is essentially constructed as a bathtub set within a plinth atop the roof. The pool is limited in size—11 feet wide, 30 feet long, and 3 feet deep—not by the capacity of the existing concrete structure but to avoid making the new plinth visible from the street. The prominently placed bar, pastel orange floor tiles, tropical plantings, “groovy” patterned cushions, and striped lounge chairs all give the poolside experience a very mod feel.

Municipal Grand is the second building in AAmp’s growing portfolio of hotels, following the Ramble in Denver, a 50-key property for the same client, designed to resemble a warehouse rehab and completed in 2018. Here, the studio contributed to the design of its public amenity spaces. A third hotel is underway in Portland, Maine, with a different client but a very similar brief to the Savannah project’s: the restoration and transformation of the 1909 Fidelity Trust Company Building into a 90-plus room hotel, with a vault turned speakeasy, set to wrap up next year. Though both are adaptive reuses of historic buildings, the 10-story Beaux-Arts tower poses a different stylistic challenge from Municipal Grand, and it will be interesting to see how AAmp rises to it. In Savannah, the “Hostess City of the South,” where the architects contended with the legacy of 1960s corporate architecture by integrating various strands of modernism, Municipal Grand radiates Southern comfort and hospitality through its material warmth, vibrancy, and softness.

Image courtesy AAmp Studio