Founders Series

Nan and Dave Anderson of Andrews & Anderson

Keep Paddling, Dammit! Renovation architects proud of their ‘small town’ portfolio

By Kimberly MacArthur Graham

In 1990 Nan Anderson founded Golden-based architects Andrews & Anderson with a fellow architect who later left the firm. Although they were well educated and eager, they did not exactly get off to a roaring start, Nan says.

Photo by Terry Shapiro

They were hired to do a historic survey for Manitou Springs, but “we had never done one,” she adds, and they spent so many hours on the project that, at its completion, the women calculated they had earned “about $3.15 an hour.”

Wisely, Nan’s husband Dave Anderson kept his promise to the fledgling firm and remained “gainfully employed by another one,” he says.

A year and a half later, however, Andrews & Anderson was making some money, and Dave joined the firm. His background in construction, beginning with a stint teaching carpentry in the Peace Corps, serves as a great complement to Nan’s training in business and fine arts.

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This combination of aptitudes, along with the creativity and open-mindedness that the Andersons attribute to their liberal arts degrees, benefits clients and projects. “We don’t have an aesthetic that we force on the clients as our baggage,” Nan says.

Their job is to help discover the design that best represents the client’s thoughts and values, Dave adds.

“We’ve never done standard, cookie-cutter architecture,” Nan says. “It’s highly customized, highly detailed. It takes a lot of time.”

Making What You Draw

Jobs that take lots of time and require both brain power and elbow grease are de rigueur for this firm—and perfectly represented by their own offices. In 2000 Nan and Dave purchased a brick Victorian on Washington Street in downtown Golden. They designed the renovation, and they and their staff dug in and did all the construction work on “Friday work days,” where the dress code was more than casual.

The remodel of Spruce Hall, a dormitory built in 1945, transformed the building into Craig Hall, the current home to DU’s Graduate School of Social Work, and included a 10,000-sq-ft, four-story addition. (Photo courtesy of Andrews & Anderson Architects)

“Everyone worked and designed; they had to make what they drew,” Dave says. “It was a good learning experience for all of us. We learned that good architects are not necessarily good carpenters.”

They both laugh as they recall the move-in date: Dec. 22, 2001, three days before Christmas. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Dave adds.

In 2005 the expanding firm purchased a 1960s-era motel, complete with pseudo-colonial façade, immediately behind them on Washington Street. “We’d been watching the motel for years, wishing it would go away,” Dave says.

Once they caught news of its availability, he and Nan negotiated for it before it came on the market. They then launched an inhouse design competition for the renovation, which they named the Tree House in honor of one of the property’s few beauties: an enormous American linden.

Freeing the Tree

Dave says that they sometimes thought of the project as “the freeing of the tree.”

“We planned to reuse what we could,” says Nan of the old building. Lamenting that all that was usable was the foundation and two walls, “we carefully took it all apart and salvaged tons, including trusses (which went to a horse barn); concrete blocks (carted off by a woman driving a VW bug); windows and doors (Habitat for Humanity); and wood (used for support during construction).

In turn, the Tree House incorporated items salvaged from other projects, including flooring pulled up during construction of the Bradford Washburn American Mountaineering Museum (designed by Andrews & Anderson); bathroom sinks removed during the firm’s award-winning historic preservation of the Beaumont Hotel in Ouray; and high school bleachers reincarnated as wood trim.

Other green measures such as permeable pavement and ground-source heat pumps added up to a LEED-gold project. “We learned a lot about sustainability,” Dave says. “Like the first building, the Tree House is an experiment, it’s a lab.”

Dave says the Tree House offered an additional opportunity: to design a contemporary structure. They’d always harbored an interest in contemporary design, but the firm’s booming preservation business left no time for developing a new capability.

But Nan says that after this award-winning office building was completed, preservation clients started thinking of them for new buildings, too.

And Andy Emke, the former intern/graduate student whose winning design became the Tree House, is now an associate in the firm.

Small Town Portfolio

For Nan and Dave, memorable projects are many, including Lookout Mountain Nature Center, Dinosaur Ridge Visitor Center, Littleton Municipal Courthouse, Belmar Library, Granby Town Hall and the library in tiny Ignacio, Colo.

“We’ve been really blessed to have a variety of great projects,” Dave says.

“We have a tendency to work lots of small projects in small cities,” says Nan, referring specifically to Ignacio. “We’ve been to places you’ve never heard of. These projects are great, though. With public-sector projects, there’s a real connection to the buildings, real public pride. It’s so gratifying to be part of that.”

Dave agrees. “There is a feeling of community involvement and pride that is almost inspirational,” he says.

Away from the office, the Andersons run, cycle, mountain climb, ski and hike—they’re hiking the Colorado Trail, piece by piece. When their two children were younger, they kept tough schedules to fit it all in—Nan rising at 4:30 a.m. to run, Dave going into the office at that time so he could leave at 3 p.m. to coach their daughter’s soccer team. Now that the kids are out of the house—Elsa is 21 and Will is 19—they admit they’re not as disciplined about leaving work at the office. Travel is now their best means of getting away. They have trotted the globe, venturing to Slovenia, New Zealand, Costa Rica and other places.

Dave and Nan are gregarious people who like to laugh, but they can get serious about social and environmental issues. They drive a hybrid vehicle, live less than a mile from their offices and bicycle rather than drive whenever they can.

Currently, they’re launching a new program that will offer to a “community-in-need” volunteer design and construction work for a small structure. They see it as a way to sharpen design skills while helping communities.

“We get so caught up in business that we lose track of these things,” Nan says.

They speak fondly of clients and praise their staff of 15, including four associate principals. They strive to maintain their unique firm culture and personal client service amid expansion.

Asked how they work together so well, Nan recounts a terrifying day early in their relationship. As interns for the National Park Service in Alaska, they’d taken out a two-person kayak and found themselves fighting impossibly strong winds as they struggled to navigate a canyon with sheer cliff walls. Out of fear and exhaustion, Nan started crying until Dave shouted, “Keep paddling, dammit!”

“We’ve adopted that as our mantra, and it works,” Nan adds, laughing.

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