All photos unless otherwise specified appear courtesy of the Richard H. Driehaus Museum Archives.

Exterior 1883

After the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, many homes made of wood were destroyed. When it came time to build new homes, laws were passed to prevent a similar disaster. Fireproof materials such as brick, marble, limestone, and terracotta tile became the preferred building materials since constructing buildings with wood was banned in the downtown area. 

Eight years after the fire, construction of the Nickerson House on Chicago’s near northside neighborhood began. The three-story, 24,000 square foot Italianate mansion was reported to be the largest and most extravagant private residence in Chicago at the time it was completed. The exterior façade is made of limestone and Berea sandstone from Ohio. Known as the “marble mansion,” the property is even more impressive inside. “The interior stonework consists of at least 17 different types of French, Italian, Belgium, and American marble as well as onyx and alabaster,” says Sally-Ann Felgenhauer, director of collections and exhibitions for The Richard H. Driehaus Museum. 

Exterior Pre-Restoration

Soon after it was built, the light-gray sandstone exterior would lose its luster due to environmental issues. “Over the years, the naturally light stonework blackened due to the build-up of soot and grime from industrial pollutants,” Felgenhauer says. As the exterior became dark and unsightly, the decorative stone elements also began to erode. 

The Nickerson House became The Richard H. Driehaus Museum when Richard H. Driehaus, a Chicago investment manager well known for his interests in preserving historic buildings, bought the home in 2003. According to a New York Times article, Driehaus purchased the home from the American College of Surgeons, a professional association that had owned it since the 1920s and soon afterward hired M. Kirby Talley Jr., an Amsterdam-based author and art historian, to oversee the restoration.

“My marching orders were to take it back to 1883,” Talley says in the New York Times article. “It’s remarkable to find a situation like this where you can honestly say that no expenses were denied to do the job the right way.”

In 2003, the same year Driehaus acquired the property, major restoration of the building began, including restoring the exterior façade.

Restoration of a Historical Landmark

“The Driehaus Museum as a Gilded Age mansion is an important piece of Chicago’s history and a window into the past that looks forward by exploring the interplay between historic and contemporary art that honors the legacy of Richard H. Driehaus,” Felgenhauer says.

Restoring the exterior required careful work by skilled teams. According to Felgenhauer, none of the stonework has been changed, but it has been restored. 

The sandstone and limestone used were both native materials to the Midwest. Berea sandstone, quarried in Ohio, was a common choice for buildings. Sandstone is a soft and porous material and while fireproof, would eventually absorb the soot billowing from the smoke from nearby coal plants. By the time Driehaus purchased the property, “those industrial pollutants had morphed into a kind of 100-year-old crust. In some places, that crust was 20 millimeters thick,” according to the Driehaus Museum blog post on why the Nickerson House used to be black.

“During the restoration, the Driehaus Museum contracted the Conservation of Sculpture & Objects Studios, Inc. (CSOS) to clean the façade using handheld lasers through a process called ablation,” Felgenhauer explains. “They removed 20,000 square feet of black crust from the stonework over a period of 18 months between 2004-2005. This was officially the first building to be cleaned in North America using this process.”

The reason lasers were used instead of more aggressive approaches such as micro-blasting was because the exterior was so soft that a harsher process would have resulted in worsening of the erosion and in some cases bleaching out the sandstone’s natural yellowish color. 

According to the Driehaus Museum website covering the natural stone exterior restoration project, the laser cleaned at a rate of approximately 2.5 square feet per hour. 

The website shares a bit more detail on the process of using the laser. “A beam of light from a handheld contraption is pointed at the building, and it breaks the molecular bond that had formed between the stone and pollutants,” according to Driehaus Museum. 

According to Felgenhauer, the CSOS team spent more than a year clearing 20,000 square feet of black crust and it was all done with small handheld instruments.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and designated a Chicago landmark on September 28, 1977. In 2008, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks awarded the Richard H. Driehaus Museum with the Chicago Landmark Award for Preservation Excellence, Felgenhauer adds.

Keeping Natural Stone Looking Great

Exterior Post-Restoration

While the restoration project was completed in 2004, the museum continues regular maintenance which includes restoration and conversation. “More recently, as part of the museum’s maintenance program, the building façade underwent tuckpointing,” says Felgenhauer.

It’s a testament to its longevity that with proper upkeep and maintenance, natural stone can withstand even the harshest elements and last for centuries. 

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Photo by Ali Byrne

Being near water has a calming effect and research studies have shown that water features can positively contribute to our overall mental health and well-being. Incorporating natural stone water features at home can bring both beauty and tranquility into your space. 

Anne Roberts, president of Chicago based Anne Roberts Gardens Company, finds that people love the sound of water because it’s relaxing. Since not every home has a water feature, adding one is a way to make your home stand out.

Michael Zimber, founder of Santa Fe-based Stone Forest, often uses natural stone in his water feature designs. According to Zimber, many homeowners choose to add a water feature to their outdoor spaces for aesthetic reasons or because it goes well with other elements in their space. “Water features add a dramatic focal point in the garden space; a tapestry of sound, visuals, and texture that attracts birds and other wildlife (including the human variety),” Zimber says. Another benefit? Water features mask road noise quite effectively.

Why add a natural stone water feature

There are countless options for natural stone water features in landscape design, including fountains, basins, waterfalls, ponds, and pools. More elaborate designs include computerized water features synchronizing music to water and light animation, like what you might see in Las Vegas or the front of some hotel properties. 

Natural stone fountains will last for generations, according to Zimber. In addition to helping mask road noise, natural stone water features can become a focal point or help define a garden space.  

Contrary to what some people might think, a water feature doesn’t have to be large like a pool or big waterfall design. “Natural stone water features can be as big or small as you have space for,” Roberts says. Her company has installed smaller streams with recycling water systems, small foot ponds, and even large natural dry riverbeds for water that periodically overwhelms areas in one’s yard.

Photo by Josh Zimber

What to consider when installing a natural stone water feature

Natural stone water features can make a dramatic statement, whether as a focal point of a space or background statement. There are several things to take into consideration when choosing a water feature, including price and maintenance. Here are a few additional things to consider when choosing your water feature. 

• The size of the reservoir. Both Roberts and Zimber remind clients that the final design needs to fit the desired space. 
• Size and weight of the water feature. If a sizeable fountain is being considered, for example, how will it be installed? Will it require a dolly/ hand truck, forklift, or crane?
• Incorporate plants. This will be geography dependent, but something to think about as you’re deciding the location of your water feature. In the southwest where Zimber is based, it’s all about drought tolerant species. “It’s nice to ‘layer’ different perennials around the water feature,” he says.
• Let the light in. Adding lighting systems will bring some visual interest to your space during the night.
• Consider short- and long-term maintenance. In addition to making sure pumps and other accessories are in working order, homeowners will want to add cleaning the reservoir to their calendar once a year, Zimber says. He also recommends using an algaecide that is bird and animal-friendly, along with a weekly dose of a chemical to fight hard water buildup. 

Photo by Eric Swanson

Types of natural stone water features

Natural stone water features can be true works of art in an outdoor space and part of their appeal is they engage several of our senses. Not only can they provide a soothing backdrop from the movement of water over the stone, but they provide a striking visual with their textured designs. 

When choosing a water feature like a fountain or basin, you want one that will be built to last in your environment. “Granites and basalt can handle cold environments and will last for generations,” Zimber says. Some gravitate toward stunning marble and onyx fountains which may not hold up quite as well, but generally will withstand the life of the garden and homeowners, Zimber adds. 

In addition to the water feature, most pieces include rocks or smaller stones beneath the focal point to capture the movement of the water.

Zimber and his team design and carve natural stone fountains. Their designs range from traditional Japanese and Old World to natural or monolithic contemporary. Fountain shapes can be in a boulder shape, millstones, sphere, or vertical. They truly can be customized to your unique space, interests, and budget.

One of the most common mistakes Zimber sees with homeowners and water features is sub-standard installations. If you’re not planning to hire a professional to install your water fountain, Stone Forest has a blog post on creating a successful fountain installation that Zimber directs people to so they can do it themselves correctly. Another mistake Zimber sees is buying a cheap foundation made of concrete. Those, he says, tend to fall apart after a few seasons. 

Photo by Eric Swanson

If the project is beyond your DIY capabilities, Roberts highly recommends hiring a firm with experience installing water features such as ponds as not every landscape has that expertise.

Once you install a natural stone water feature, you’ll be able to enjoy it for decades.

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An earlier version of this article originally appeared in the Fall 2022 edition of Building Stone Magazine. All photos, unless otherwise noted, appear courtesy of Steve Hinds Photography.

Freedom Place at Old Parkland in Dallas is the newest addition to what was originally a 19th-century hospital complex done in the Jeffersonian style.

A former hospital complex originally built in 1894, the Old Parkland campus in Dallas, Texas, has seen its share of reclamation and renovation in the past decades. The most recent addition, Freedom Place at Old Parkland, echoes the campus’ existing Jeffersonian buildings in style and design. Designing and building a 140-foot, six-story structure that includes 8,310 pieces of limestone required massive planning and coordination — particularly because the original design plan was created for cast stone. 

Despite challenges that ran the gamut from an increased need for collaboration to fabrication difficulties to unique engineering needs and the impact of weather conditions, the masonry was completed in a little more than a year.

An Argument for Longevity

Freedom Place fits seamlessly with the other older buildings in the complex, one of which was built using Indiana limestone.

“I really believe certain structures like churches, institutions, and government buildings should have a higher calling. Those areas of the market should be built for longevity,” says Rob Barnes, president and CEO of Dee Brown Inc., whose company did the stone installation on the Freedom Place project. Dee Brown was awarded the contract based on the architectural drawings that included cast stone. Barnes was instrumental in convincing building owner Crow Holdings, a privately held real estate investment and development firm, whose offices are on the campus, to switch from using cast stone to natural stone — specifically, durable Indiana limestone.

As Barnes laid out his argument, “cast stone has a shortened lifecycle compared to natural stone, which is denser, generally less porous, and doesn’t craze like cast stone. Craze, or ‘spider veins,’

is a characteristic that has to do with the amount of product produced and how much water is put on it during the curing phase,” he says. Once water makes its way into the material it begins to create problems with longevity. “There’s a lot of subjectivity in the manufacturing of cast stone that you don’t have with the natural product. It’s extracted; it’s solid. It has a longer history of performance. If you’re going to build a 100-year building, you want to use natural stone.”   

Market forces also bolstered Barnes’ argument. While many people assume natural stone is more expensive than cast, that depends on supply and demand. At the time the documents came out for bid, he says, “there was a lot of volume in the market [for cast stone], a lot of speculation on a lot of projects, and [enough cast stone] couldn’t have been produced in a timely manner.” All of which made the cost of the natural stone competitive. 

As it turned out, owner Harlan Crow didn’t have to be pushed too much. In addition, one of the original buildings, circa 1902, was built from Indiana limestone. As Barnes says, using natural stone on the newest building “would close the chapter.” 

Material Challenges 

Barnes says that making the switch forced the project to move from the traditional bid-for-award to design-build because of the increased level of collaboration needed. There would be significant adjustments to shop drawings and the engineering process. This added stress to the time allotted for stone procurement, so schedules had to be adjusted. 

The fabricators at 3D Stone in Bloomington, Indiana, were concerned with how the new material would be anchored to the structure. 

PICCO Group developed 205 pages of what were essentially bespoke connection details. The engineers point to piece “D67,” top right in photo, as one example. That piece sits on the structure but “it really wants to tip out,” says main stone engineer Matthew Innocente. “There’s a big rotation that we were trying to restrain using that D67 plate and four pins.” Drawing courtesy of PICCO Group.

 For the engineers, the switch to natural stone meant a real shift in their work. PICCO Group, a Canadian firm with a long history of specializing in stone cladding, had been brought into the project during site excavation when the design still showed cast stone. But natural stone pieces would likely be much larger, and some would be heavier. In some cases, the engineers would have to add steel to the building to be able to support the stone. If the limestone took up two courses of cast stone, the building angles might be off. “These were massive cubic stones in a design with large overhangs and corners. There was some tricky engineering that meant we had to be creative with solutions,” says project manager Dustin South. 

South and main stone engineer Matt Innocente were tasked with developing the connections to attach the stone to the structure. “We have 205 pages of connection details,” Innocente says. “That’s more than 200 different connection types we created because of the way this building is designed. It’s not just a flat wall where every piece can be repetitively connected in the same way. These are bespoke connections for a lot of unique dispersed elements like soffits, keystones, corners, columns.” 

The connections — dowels, pins, stainless steel plates — had to be able to carry the weight of the stones, keep them from falling off the structure, and hold the stone back from wind loading. 

They also had to consider whether their designs could be implemented by an installer. “We can invent a crazy connection,” South says, “but if you can’t reach your hand around it and bolt it down, it’s useless.” 

That meant a lot of back-and-forth coordination with the installers and general contractor. PICCO Group worked on the project for about a year, South says.

The entry door under the portico proved a particular challenge. Above the door is a 13-foot wide triangular piece, two feet six inches thick and weighing in excess of 10,000 pounds. It was more than any crew could handle.

The limestone supplier suggested breaking it into three pieces and have vertical joints in it. The architects found that aesthetically unacceptable. The installers had to figure out a way to get a crane small enough but with enough capacity to reach under the porch and fly this piece into place — and be accurate to within a 16th of an inch.

Their biggest challenge was the sheer size of some of the limestone pieces. South points to one 7,000-pound stone by way of example. “Once you add in the lateral forces, that’s another 1,000 pounds of wind load that acts on the stone,” South says. With such large surface areas, the “connections have to take those loads into account as well as the stresses imposed on the stone to make sure, for example, that the pins don’t burst from the stone, that the plate is stiff and large enough, that we have enough anchors going into the structure to support the stone.”

Then there were the carvings and a balcony railing that had to be held in place and designed to carry the weight of people possibly leaning against or sitting on them. 

New Technology Helps

Kevin Newton, senior project manager at The Beck Group in Dallas, which provided architectural and construction services, marvels at how such large and complex buildings with dentals, Ionic columns, and Corinthian capitals were built in the past without benefit of technology. Working on this project has given him a new appreciation for this style of architecture, he says. “Knowing we have cranes and hoists and forklifts with 12,000-pound capacity — how did the ancients build these kind of stone buildings with hand tools and no machinery?”

Kneelers, six-foot sections of stone, cantilever off the corners of the roof triangle. Each is a single piece of stone, nearly 7,000 pounds. Installing each one tied up the tower crane that had to hold it in place for hours, bracing against the wind, while masons anchored it. If the winds were over 20 miles an hour, the crew couldn’t set the piece for that day because it couldn’t tolerate that kind of movement.

There was, in fact, a lot of technology that went into this project, which began as a watercolor rendering drawn by Craig Hamilton, the design architect, who works from his office outside London. Once the building owner blessed the design, Beck Group, the project’s architect of record, turned the renderings into construction documents — some in CAD, some 2D computer drawings, floor plans, and elevations which also addressed local building code compliance. The ultimate finished product was a 3D Revit model for the design. From there, the process moved to the construction side, Newton says, where they used Building Information Modeling (BIM) to check for “clash detection,” i.e., identifying where two parts of a building design interfere with each other. 

Although a natural element, the limestone pieces themselves underwent some changes that required technological assistance. The design called for stone cladding that was eight-inches thick, but to reduce some of the weight and give the stone full depth, the backs especially at the corners of the stones were “gutted out and hooked,” says Shawn Culbertson, vice president of drafting and project development at 3D Stone in Bloomington, Indiana. This took a lot of time and required a special tool made by a blacksmith to plane or scrape the material to get the right profile.

“This was definitely not something we went at like we normally would,” says Culbertson, whose company was also responsible for the hundreds of detailed carvings that adorn the building. “There was a lot of time management and networking with other fabricators as we worked on the carvings.” 

The rosettes were modeled by architect Craig Hamilton. Then they were scanned and duplicated on a CNC machine. 3D Stone worked with Dee Brown to design a threaded stainless-steel insert. Once the builders set the arches, they could spin the rosettes and lock them in place. The threaded insert was timed so the rosettes all face the same direction.

Those carvings — 66 large-scale oxen crania, for example — required the use of CAD cam software and CNC equipment. “The oxen were originally modeled out of wood and clay. Then a 3D scanner scanned that and created an STL model (a 3D file format). Then we were able to bring that into our CAD system,” Culbertson says. “It probably took a million lines of code to move the machines the way we needed to carve them out. We’d run six of them over a weekend to meet the deadline.” 

The other helpful building tool was decidedly old-fashioned — an actual mockup. 3D Stone provided stone samples to the installers at Dee Brown, which then built a two-story mockup, approximately 16’ X 13’. “It had all the detail we could build into it,” Barnes says. They used it as a building guide, and the architects were able to see the aesthetics of the variegated limestone, which moved in color from silver to buff and back to silver with seams that naturally occur in the earth. 

Dee Brown built an approximately 16’ X 13’ two-story mockup with as much detail as possible to test the design. Photo courtesy of Dee Brown Inc.

Barnes says the mockup helped them “work through the building challenges, so when we transferred to the project, we were able to see some things that needed to be done to make the install go better.”

They looked at how the flashing needed to interface with the vertical jambs, how the anchorage interfaced with the backup, how they could create that seamless, waterproof back and how best to work out the brick patterns. “It was a collaborative effort with the project team and the install team,” Barnes says. “It helped us work through finalizing the schedule, too. It’s a very complex façade. A steel structure is more complex than one that’s concrete. There’s more tolerance and give in the steel and we had to work through the challenges of how the building is built and how you lock it in, so you don’t have movement in the backup structure as you install products. The mockup was a beneficial exercise for everyone.”

Fifteen months; 180 individual carvings; 8,310 pieces of Indiana limestone brought in by 155 truckloads and the end result is a stunning structure that will stand the test of time. “Freedom Place’s one-of-a-kind limestone, brick, and zinc façade is really a jewel in the Dallas skyline,” Newton says. “Everyone on the team is so proud to have overcome the unique design and construction challenge. The clients and tenants are elated.

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The Importance of Material Transparency

Natural stone has a great reputation for environmentally friendly qualities such as its durability, low embodied energy, no volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and being a nearly complete material in its natural state. Mother Nature does most of the work, making natural stone a single ingredient material suitable for many interior and exterior applications that perform impeccably over time. Most other building materials require additional ingredients and a more complex manufacturing process. Because these added materials and processes can have a negative impact on our health and the environment, they should be considered when selecting a material for a project. 

The different manufacturing processes and impacts of building materials are being documented in product labels including Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and Health Product Declarations (HPDs). These labels are intended to demonstrate that the health and environmental claims are transparent, accurate, and meet defined standards. These labels can then be used to select and specify building products like natural stone to ensure the well-being of a project’s occupants and the planet. 

Natural stone flooring options are limitless and can also support a healthy interior environment.

“Natural” and “environmentally sustainable” do not mean the same thing. These product labels are significant for the stone industry. They provide independent data to show how using natural stone in projects can support lower embodied carbon goals, providing specifiers with the information needed to make more effective material decisions. These labels also reinforce the important work the natural stone industry has been doing for many years to improve the processes of quarrying, fabricating, transporting, and installing natural stone, which are assessed through the Natural Stone Sustainability Standard.

Impacts during the life cyle of natural stone including raw material acquisition, transportation, manufacturing, use, and end of life are documented in EPDs and HPDs

EPDs and HPDs for Natural Stone Explained

EPDs and HPDs were developed in response to the growing green building movement and requirements that a product’s life cycle impacts are defined and transparent. Just like nutrition labels make it easy to compare ingredients, calories, preservatives, and other information about food products, EPDs and HPDs simplify the process of comparing building materials. The labels themselves do not necessarily tell you if a product is more environmentally friendly than another on their own—rather, they allow you to compare materials using the information provided in the labels to get a more complete understanding of their sustainability claims. To understand this better, let’s discuss these labels in more detail and consider how to use them in your next building or remodeling project.

EPDs

An EPD is a registered document that quantifies environmental information on the life cycle of a product to enable comparisons between products fulfilling the same function. EPDs define the environmental impacts throughout the product’s life cycle. Impacts that are recorded and provided in an EPD include: a product’s global warming potential, eutrophication, acidification, ozone layer depletion, whether the product contains carcinogens, and many others. An EPD may be used for many different applications, including green building design. For example, within LEED, BREEAM, and other green building rating systems, EPDs are used to encourage the purchasing of low carbon products with life-cycle information. Industry-wide natural stone EPDs are available for cladding, flooring/paving, and countertops, making it possible to meet health and environmental goals for any type of project with ease. The natural stone EPDs consider impacts that occur during the quarrying, fabrication, installation, care and maintenance, and disposal of the stone.

Natural stone countertops can play an important role in the health and well-being of an interior and its occupants.

HPDs

HPDs offer greater transparency of material ingredients and their potential human health impacts.  HPDs provide a full disclosure of the potential chemicals of concern in products by comparing product ingredients to a wide variety of “hazard” lists published by government authorities and scientific associations. The HPD should provide 100% disclosure of known ingredients and/or 100% disclosure of known hazards down to 1,000 ppm. All versions of the HPD are recognized within LEED v4 Material Ingredient credits. Within the LEED v4.1 Materials and Resources credit: Building Product Disclosure and Optimization: Material Ingredients, HPDs can also contribute to earning points. Through a special exception for geological materials, HPDs representing dimension stone materials worldwide were developed by the Natural Stone Institute. The HPDs are for common natural stone types used in the dimension stone industry including granite, limestone, marble, quartzite, onyx, sandstone, slate, travertine, and more. There are now 13 HPDs for natural stone that can be found in 15 different MasterFormat classifications, a trusted source for designers. Companies and design teams throughout the industry can take advantage of these industry-wide disclosures.

Stacks and slabs of natural stone ready for use as paving, flooring, or countertops.

Natural Stone Versus Other Materials* 

Let’s compare natural stone to a few other building materials to understand how stone stacks up within these product labels. For example, natural stone countertops were determined to have a global warming potential (GWP) of 46.8kg of CO2e/m2 (weight of carbon dioxide equivalent emitted per square meter) versus engineered quartz, which has a GWP of 102.6kg of CO2e/m2. The EPD demonstrates that natural stone can result in a 54% reduction of embodied carbon.

If you are considering natural stone for the exterior of a project, knowing that its GWP is only 21.4kg of CO2e/m2, versus precast concrete cladding which has a GWP of 62.3kg of CO2e/m2, makes the decision much easier. Choosing natural stone means that your project can have up to 66% less of an impact on the Earth.

While terrazzo is a popular flooring material, it has been shown to have a GWP of 82.2kg of CO2e/m2 versus natural stone which has only 22kg of CO2e/m2. Using natural stone for this same application can support a 37% embodied carbon reduction.

The HPD for marble demonstrates that only marble is present in the material. If you compare that to an HPD for a wood laminate, there are additional ingredients present such as phenol formaldehyde and formaldehyde resin. Exposure to these products is known to irritate the skin, throat, lungs, and eyes. Repeated exposure to formaldehyde can possibly lead to cancer.  

Sample HPD material content summary for marble and a wood laminate product.

How to Use EPDs and HPDs

To begin, make it a priority to select materials that will have a measurable positive difference on your health and the environment such as natural stone. Explore the EPD and HPD labels and familiarize yourself with the terms to effectively make comparisons across different materials.  Spend time discussing the various material impacts and options with your designer, material supplier, and installer to optimize the features of the material while also ensuring its long-term use and care. Knowing that you have chosen an environmentally sustainable material will keep you and the planet healthy while also contributing to your peace of mind. 

Natural stone has been used throughout history in iconic structures that symbolize beauty, strength, durability, and permanence. Other materials may strive to mimic these characteristics, but genuine natural materials connect us with the planet and its future in a unique and undeniable way. EPDs and HPDs will only serve to further the thoughtful use of natural stone in environmentally friendly, low carbon building designs for many years to come.

Additional Resources

To find EPD and HPD labels for natural stone, visit the Sustainable Minds Transparency Catalog.
For more information on Environmental Product Declarations and Health Product Declarations see:

environdec.com and The Health Product Declaration® Collaborative (HPDC).
BREEAM USA
LEED Rating System
MasterFormat

*NOTE:  The embodied carbon quantities displayed were estimated based on the following: 

Functional Unit: 1m²  

Scope: Raw Material Extraction, Transportation, Manufacturing (A1-A3)

Natural Stone: Industry-Wide EPDs

Pre-Cast Concrete Cladding: Industry-Wide EPD, 150 lbs per ft³, 4” thick

Engineered Quartz: Average of three individual manufacturer EPDs

Terrazzo: Average of three individual manufacturer EPDs

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