Can You Name This Building? (We roofed it!) Hint: New Buildings and New Roofs on an 181-Year-Old Campus

Newly constructed, beautiful, sustainable, and enough space to sleep 350 — this college campus housing complex is located 40 miles east of Atlanta, just outside of Covington, GA. Sentry Roof worked in coordination with dozens of other specialty trades to complete the two L-shaped residence halls in 2008. They were designed and built to achieve LEED silver certification, which means there was a lot of planning and exact specifications required, something our crews have a lot of experience with.

While the complex and sustainable design concepts are new, the 56-acre campus itself is anything but — the college was founded in 1836. Sentry has been around a long time but not long enough to have built the first buildings! We’re glad to have worked on the new buildings and new roofs for this well-known, two-year residential college that feeds into the Emory Atlanta campus.

Did you guess the buildings? They’re the….

Murdy and Elizer Residence Halls at Oxford College of Emory University

Oxford College is an Atlanta area institution. This residential hall complex was built to maintain that reputation. It was designed for longevity and sustainability from top to bottom, and was constructed to a very high level of workmanship and conformance to specifications. The roofs are a combination of asphalt shingles and modified bitumen integrated with metalwork and stone, plus a few flat roofs here and there.

Managing issues related to location

We’re accustomed to dealing with issues like the lack of parking and limited property access — even though this was a new construction project, working on a campus that’s currently operating has the same kinds of constraints we find when working on re-roofing projects. Sentry took special care to limit disturbances to residents or people working around the job site, as we always do. Part of a successful project is being flexible and respectful.

Managing issues related to design

Beautiful buildings often come with beautiful roof designs that present some challenges. In this case, the design of the custom rounded barrel dormers was complex enough that we needed to build an assembly jig to prefabricate the dormers and bend the copper roof panels in advance at our metal shop in Norcross. We also fabricated the gutterheads and downspouts to specifications, and installed the plywood decking, fascia and soffit.

Managing issues related to roofing specifications

One of the benefits of having constructed so many new roofs over the years is our team can make suggestions to benefit the project that others may not have considered. Teamwork is important. For example, on this project we were able to work with the owner, engineers, and designers to submit roofing solutions that helped bring workable details to several design challenges regarding the roofing system. The solutions met the design criteria while resulting in a roof that performed better for the same cost.

While Sentry was working on the project the residence halls weren’t called by their current names, Murdy Hall and and Elizer Hall. They were called Alpha and Beta. In 2013 the halls were renamed for two college administrators. Name changes are nothing new for Oxford College – it was originally founded as Emory College. In 1915 Emory College moved to Atlanta (following its benefactor, Asa Candler of Coca-Cola) and took the Emory name with it. The Oxford, GA, campus was called by many different names until finally becoming Oxford College in 1963.

Our Sentry team likes to work on new buildings and new roofs, and especially those that allow us to solve challenges inherent in complicated projects. We don’t shy away from challenges or projects that require extreme levels of coordination and specialty work to meet specifications, like this one. In fact, these are the projects we often find most rewarding because they allow us to use all of our skill sets! We thank New South Construction for bringing us in on the Oxford College new construction project.