A year-round rooftop

Schneithorst’s Restaurant & Bar, a St. Louis staple over the last century, boasts a new rooftop made of steel and glass, perfect for patrons who want to enjoy their German food and beverages with an outdoor feel all year long.

St. Louis is certainly well-known for its towering Gateway Arch, perennially contending professional baseball team, and nationally known beverage brand Anheuser-Busch. The region is also equally known for its brutally hot and humid weather in the summer months. Punishing weather should be no reason to prevent local residents and tourists from enjoying the outdoors with cold drink in hand.

At least that’s what the owners of Schneithorst’s Restaurant & Bar thought. The German-inspired eatery and beer garden, established a century ago in 1917, contracted St. Louis-based TROCO Custom Fabricators to fabricate a sweet upgrade to it rooftop bar in an effort to allow patrons to enjoy an open-air environment year-round, rain or shine.

TROCO knows all about weathering storms. After 15 years in business, the company has survived the cyclical nature of business, including the recession of that latter portion of the last decade.

“The recession was tough on everyone,” said Tim Trotter, president of TROCO Custom Fabricators. “We had really steady growth until the recession, and that hit us hard. Everyone, including us, had a tough time coming out of that, but we survived.”

Not only did they survive, but they boasted their best year to date in 2016, and 2017 is shaping up to be even better. It doesn’t hurt that the company, which employs 22, has a healthy array of heavy fabricating equipment at its disposal, including a 60-ton press brake, a 120-ton press brake, a 10-ft. shear that can sever plate up to ¼ in. thick, multiple GMAW and GTAW stations, in-house machining centers, lathes, drill presses, and a 6- by 12-ft. waterjet.

Bringing Europe to STL

On a personal level, Trotter gained an appreciation for European architecture while he lived there during a three-year time period in the late 1980s. So when the opportunity came about to work with Schneithorst’s, Trotter felt like it was a project that fell right into his company’s wheelhouse.

Schneithorst’s was looking to replace its deteriorating heavy timber pergola with one made of steel and glass. They wanted something that aesthetically had European flare but functionally would give patrons the ability to enjoy the rooftop beer garden all year long. At the time, patrons didn’t use the open-air beer garden during intensely hot or rainy days.

“They really wanted something that looked like a European train station. They wanted to see multiple fasteners and rivets with the bolts that were holding it all together,” Trotter explained.

The challenge lay in working with the existing structures and determining the appropriate locations of the new columns on the existing beams that were there to support the rooftop deck.

“We were putting all of this weight up there, so we had to work closely with the engineer on where all of our posts would land.”

The restaurant contracted TROCO Custom Fabricators to create a rooftop that resembled a European train station.

To make things simple downstream, TROCO fabricated the structure so that it could all be bolted in place, as opposed to welded on-site. This allowed crews to erect the metal structure in just four days.

The Fun Is in the Details

One of the more interesting design elements of the new metal support structures are the ornate features found at the top of each capital. With help from the architect, who brought a foam model of a capital topped off with barley and hops, TROCO’s CAD team created drawings, programmed those drawings into the waterjet, and cut out the parts. From there fabricators hand-worked the parts to create a 3-D effect before welding them together.

“We used aluminum to fabricate these details because it’s more malleable and easier to work with. We tapped each piece with a hammer to give it character. It turned out really well and they look exactly like the architect intended,” Trotter said.

Today beer connoisseurs at Schneithorst’s can enjoy their German food and drink in a bright, European-inspired rooftop, safe from any and all weather assaults. It was a project that Trotter enjoyed.

“If you’re going to build something, why not build something cool? It might take a little more effort to build something that’s really nice, but in the end it’s worth it.”

Prost!

Photos courtesy of TROCO Custom Fabricators, 314-781-6060, www.trocofab.com.

The beams were fabricated with steel with the intent that they be bolted in place, as opposed to being welded. The ornate details at the top—barley and hops—were designed by the architect, transferred into CAD, and then cut out using a waterjet.