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Raise your hand if you remember the original design for the Pizza Hut Restaurant. It was a building form so iconic that the restaurant’s logo still carries that dual pitched “hut” roof form. In addition to the crazy roof form – in red – many had sported trapezoidal windows along three sides. A very distinctive, if not quickly dated design.

Fast forward to today and you’ll discover the restaurant chain has adopted a cleaner line, modern look.  Eventually, new establishments started to appear in the old pizza hut buildings.

Lean Away from the Old

Imagine you want to open a restaurant in an old Pizza Hut building. The last thing you want to do is have your customers associate you with the former occupant. You will go out of your way to disguise the tell-tale features of its previous life. Such is the case of two restaurants – a French Restaurant in Mount Pleasant, SC and an Italian restaurant in Greenville, SC. Both changed the roof material and exterior cladding. The Italian one even added a front porch with columns and shutters to distinguish the crazy trapezoid shape. In both cases, I was unaware of its pizza chain origins until I got inside where the window shape is a dead giveaway.

CVS drug store also had a distinct exterior building form – not as outrageous and the popular pizza joint, but they became a familiar sight because there seem to be on every street corner. I recently saw two former drug stores with a new life. One is a beer and wine store (I wonder why I noticed that) and one was a drive through car wash. Is that thinking outside the box – or is it inside the box? You decide.

Lean In to the Old

Repurposed gas stations have emerged as a new chic! Like the previously mentioned drug store, gas stations often had highly visible and accessible locations. But unlike converting the pizza joint to fine dining, these new establishments embraced their former life. One such example is Fuel Charleston. Instead of filling up your car with gas, here you fuel your soul with Caribbean inspired food.

In Napa Valley, there are two examples of gas stations with new lives. One is Tank Garage Winery in Calistoga, and the other is Honor Market in Yountville. Both sport gas pumps in front but they are operational at Honor Market. Unsurprisingly, they both sell wine.

Coyote Coffee in Pickens, SC was once a gas station now turn coffee shop. But in near by Six Mile, SC, the former fire station is now a drive thru coffee shop.

Repurposed Church

Where else but in Charleston, SC where food worship is almost a religion, a former church has become a very chic restaurant. Church and Union is located on busy Market Street and sports a very unusual finish on the open vaulted church ceiling.

Of course, I could go on – old warehouse buildings becoming loft apartments or an open-air event venue (Greenville). I just love the outside the box creativity that breathes new life into old buildings. It makes me smile.  Our cities are filled with other fun examples. If you happen to know of one, send me a quick pic to me at Housing Design Matters.