Fewer and fewer Norfolkians still remember Rice’s Department Store as a handsome and marble-columned community anchor that occupied the corner of Granby and Freemason Streets for nearly 50 years in downtown Norfolk. Fewer still know the site had two previous lives, starting as an exhibition hall in 1910 known as the Fergus Reid Building, then becoming the Ames and Brownley Department Store in 1918, before beginning its storied run as Rice’s in 1939. The advent of the suburban mall effectively led to its shuttering in 1985, after which the City of Norfolk purchased the property and its neighbors to create a combined 100,000 square-foot redevelopment opportunity, eventually selling to local digital marketing agency Grow in January 2020, mere weeks before COVID lockdowns.
More »Architect Sonja Shields on Social Security’s 21st Century Workplace
Sonja Shields, AIA, is a senior project manager for the Washington, D.C. office of HGA, architect of record for the Arthur J. Altmeyer Social Security Administration Building in Woodlawn, Maryland, a modernization project. Creating a 21st century workplace wasn’t just about upgrading a 1960 building originally designed by Baltimore architect Richard Ayers, says Shields. It was about adapting a workplace to last another six decades. In 2022, AIA Virginia recognized the Altmeyer Building with an Award of Honor in the architecture category for the modernization’s sensitivities to both environmental imperatives as well as social sustainability concepts that are redefining a much broader conversation nationwide about what it means to work in an office. Here she talks about HGA’s approach and its partnership with the project’s design firm, Snow Kreilich Architects.
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