The Hotel Montgomery, in downtown San Jose, constructed in 1911, is on the National Register of Historic Places. Originally sited on a prominent street corner, the hotel was a focus of social life, in the city for half a century, but declining economic conditions shuttered the building in the 1980s. Preservation advocates saved the hotel from demolition, and, in 2000, the building was moved nearly 190 feet south to make way for new development. The newly deeded parcel included an approximately fifty foot wide open space to preserve the secondary street facade, and the building was renovated and restored to its original purpose in 2005.

In 2015, new owners sought to maximize the land value while protecting the historic quality of the existing asset. Seeking to capitalize on their expanding customer base - drawn from the surrounding tech market - they asked for a preliminary design to add 200 or more guestrooms to the hotel. The only available space was the preserved 50 foot wide strip north of the existing building. The concept was to design a tower that would fulfill the needs of a new luxury hotel while preserving and enhancing the functions of the existing historic hotel. The design strategy involves building on only half of the remaining site to a height above the existing building, then cantilevering over the older hotel with double-loaded guestroom floors, and extending to 24 levels, topped with a roof-top, pool terrace, bar and event space.

The incentive for the owner to build such an addition of such extremely different scale reflects a contemporary theme of modern urban real estate. More densely developed cities, such as New York, offer myriad examples, where each generation of development yields ever larger buildings to offset rising land costs and increasing demand. In this case, there is a tangible public benefit in the form of an extraordinarily dramatic interstitial space between the existing building and the new addition. This “hyphen” space (in the terminology of historic architects), enclosed with full-height glazing, provides a semi-public room and a striking new hotel entry that offers visitors a sheltered and intimate experience of the landmark hotel’s historic facade