Horton Grand Hotel
San Diego, CA

The Horton Grand and the Kahle Saddlery Building, both unreinforced brick masonry buildings, were scheduled to be demolished. The reconstruction of these buildings into a new 100 room hotel rewrote the building codes to allow for reconstruction of historic building parts. These were the first historic buildings to be dismantled and reconstructed using the original building features to obtain Investment Tax Credits under the auspices of the National Park Service. Sixteen Penny Construction performed the tedious dismantling of the Horton Grand and Kahle Saddlery buildings. Extensive photographs and drawings documented every phase of the operation.

Heritage Architecture & Planning conceptualized new detailed systems of integrating the historic components with modern technology. To provide a code definition for these concepts, Heritage coined the term "reconstruction". Reconstruction allows for the reuse of original historic parts for reconstruction. This definition is now found in the 2001 revision to the California State Historical Building Code and the National Park Service's Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties.