Top Shelf: A high-class setting for Whisky & Ramen.

• Author: Orr, Vanessa

When Jon McNeil and Nicole Cusack decided to bring a ramen restaurant to Anchorage, they pictured a small, cozy place where they could share their love of phenomenal food and high-level craft cocktails. Instead, they fell in love with a historic three-story, 6,000-square-foot building downtown that provided more than enough room for a growing restaurant--but also enough design challenges to match the space.

Now one of Anchorage's hot spots with a two-month or more waiting list, Whisky & Ramen was a labor of love that McNeil, a dentist, and Cusack, a lawyer, can look back on with pride. But renovating the space took a lot of effort as well as innovative design solutions.

"We had no idea how big it was when we first saw it; it was just a great old concrete building that had a ton of history, including surviving the 1964 earthquake," says McNeil. "Instead of seeing it destroyed like a lot of old buildings are, we decided to buy it so it didn't get wasted."

Once they started exploring their new purchase, the couple realized that much of its unique architecture had been hidden by older finishes. While the front part of the building had been built more than a century ago, the back part of the building had been added in the '60s. In its many iterations, it has served as a photo studio for famed Alaska painter Sydney Laurence, the home of Stoltz Electric Co., an antique store, and later a mercantile.

Up to Code

The back part of the building was made of board formed concrete, which the couple were able to preserve in the modern renovation. "There aren't a lot of concrete buildings like this anymore," says McNeil, noting that it can be cost-prohibitive to use this type of construction method in modern facilities.

It took them a couple of years to strip the building, in part because the entire facade had to be seismically upgraded to meet modern earthquake codes. Steel beams were installed behind the brick facade, which was reattached to the original concrete back of the building that was already up to code.

"While most historical buildings are grandfathered in, because we went from mercantile use to restaurant use, our project fell under current codes, which made the renovation even more difficult," says McNeil, adding that, in addition to meeting municipal codes, the entire building is now ADA-compliant.

Because a lot of the building is below grade, the renovation had to utilize the existing sewer line and plumbing lines, incorporating their path...