"restoration" Archives | Browse Articles & Resources Written By Experts https://usenaturalstone.org/tag/restoration/ Articles & Case Studies Promoting Natural Stone Mon, 19 Feb 2024 18:15:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://usenaturalstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/cropped-use-natural-stone-favicon-2-1-32x32.png "restoration" Archives | Browse Articles & Resources Written By Experts https://usenaturalstone.org/tag/restoration/ 32 32 Timeless Beauty: Chicago Landmark Restored to Its Natural Stone Glory https://usenaturalstone.org/timeless-beauty-chicago-landmark-restored-to-its-natural-stone-glory/ Fri, 16 Feb 2024 21:30:36 +0000 https://usenaturalstone.org/?p=11442 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 post Timeless Beauty: Chicago Landmark Restored to Its Natural Stone Glory appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]>

Timeless Beauty: Chicago Landmark Restored to Its Natural Stone Glory

|

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. 

SIMILAR ARTICLES:

The post Timeless Beauty: Chicago Landmark Restored to Its Natural Stone Glory appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]> The Perfect Match: Digging Deep to Restore the Wyoming State Capitol https://usenaturalstone.org/the-perfect-match-digging-deep-to-restore-the-wyoming-state-capitol/ Tue, 14 Nov 2023 17:55:18 +0000 https://usenaturalstone.org/?p=11276 Four years of overhaul—the complex’s first major renovation since 1917—resulted in a state capitol worthy of the accolades it has received. The stonework received the 2021 Grande Pinnacle Award from the Natural Stone Institute, while awards for the total project streamed in from many trade organizations: the American Public Works Association, Building Design and Construction magazine, the American Council of Engineering Companies of Colorado, the Construction Management Association of America, and Engineering-News Record Mountain States.

The post The Perfect Match: Digging Deep to Restore the Wyoming State Capitol appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]>

Design Professionals can receive a free subscription to the print edition of Building Stone Magazine. 

The Perfect Match: Digging Deep to Restore the Wyoming State Capitol

|

An earlier version of this article originally appeared in the Fall 2022 edition of Building Stone Magazine.

Wyoming State Capitol. Photo courtesy of Dan Schwalm Photography.

Just one highway leads to Rawlins, Wyoming, a small city 150 miles northwest of the state capital of Cheyenne. Rawlins straddles interstate route 80, but otherwise has drawn little attention to itself since its glory days in the 1800s, when it served as a freight and passenger stop on the Transcontinental Railroad. 

In the late nineteenth century, a quarry here produced sandstone for construction projects throughout the region. Rawlins sandstone glows in sunlight with a warm gray that lends a stately air to building exteriors, making it particularly attractive to designers of ornate government edifices. Overseeing the quarry’s production, owner Hans Larsen knew that this high-quality stone should be the fundamental material to grace the Wyoming territorial capitol building, for which construction began in the mid-1880s, several years before Wyoming received statehood. However, the architects had specified sandstone from Loveland, Colorado for the foundation and the capitol steps, with plans to bring more of this stone from Loveland to create the ornamented façade. 

Hearing of this insult to Wyoming quarries, Larsen stormed into Cheyenne, demanding that the local government use materials from its own resources rather than importing stone from another territory’s quarry. Government officials, no doubt taken aback by this fiery businessman, saw the wisdom in his point. Larsen won the contract, making Rawlins sandstone the material of choice for the capitol’s impressive exterior. Skilled stone masons created hundreds of detailed sculpted features by hand. Each column, corner, and cornice was a unique tribute to the sandstone’s quality and durability. The finished structure, including the towering rotunda, opened in 1888. 

Not even Wyoming sandstone can last forever, however, so some 130 years later, Wyoming’s infamously harsh winters had taken their toll on the original building, as well as the additions to Capitol Square constructed in 1890 and 1917. In 2013, the state began a massive $299 million renovation of the entire capitol complex, bringing top talent from across the region to Cheyenne to restore the grandeur of this splendid Renaissance Revival façade. The state determined that the restored capitol should look exactly as it did when the first crew completed it in 1888, so the team of architects, masons, and fabricators looked northwest to Rawlins once again for stone to match the building’s worn exterior. 

But Rawlins no longer had a working stone quarry. The quarry had closed in the 1920s, nearly 100 years before.

Unearthing the Stone

A block of sandstone is hoisted by a stiff leg derrick in a sandstone quarry owned by the Kerr Marle and Stone Company near Rawlins, WY between 1890 and 1910. It is believed that this photo might be the same quarry used in the Wyoming State Capitol restoration. Photo courtesy Wyoming State Archives.

The land containing the former quarry now belonged to Overland Trail Cattle Company, a major ranching and cattle operation and a subsidiary of Anschutz Corp, a private equity company based in Denver, Colorado. 

“Eldon Strid, a local person, provided a tremendous amount of knowledge about where the quarry was and who the owners were,” said Jeff Callinan of J.E. Dunn Construction Company, the general contractor for the state capitol project. “The land had recently changed hands—they were about to put a wind farm on this land.”

J.E. Dunn tried to contact the owners, but when they received no response, they enlisted the help of the governor’s office of the State of Wyoming. Governor Matt Mead and his staff approached Anschutz and “managed to shake it loose,” Callinan said, striking a deal that allowed the state to take 253 tons of sandstone from the former quarry for a reasonable price, providing the state found its own people to bring out the stone. J.E. Dunn tackled this tall order and located a mobile quarry operator in South Dakota. 

“We’d never had to set up a mobile quarry before,” said Callinan. “Normally, we are in the business of going out to the quarry to select big blocks of stone. In this case, we had to learn about the front end and getting the stone extracted. It’s a logistical project to get the stone out of the earth and get it to the people who can create a piece to go into the building. This team knows how to go through that logistical challenge.” 

The governor’s office of the State of Wyoming helped in the access in the capitol’s former quarry source in Rawlins, WY, which had closed nearly 100 years before. 235 tons of sandstone were quarried and used in the restoration effort. Here, cuts are made in the sandstone where sections of block will be extracted using a wire saw. Photo courtesy State of Wyoming.

Setting up a mobile quarry came with its own package of obstacles, Callinan explained. “We had to build a road. We had to coordinate with the Department of Corrections because there was a prison nearby. Then the Fish and Wildlife Department identified that a golden eagle was nesting in the area.” Golden eagles are a protected species under the Bald and Golden Eagles Act of 1940, so the quarry team had to wait for a month to begin their work until the eaglets had fledged and the birds abandoned the nest. 

The effort to reopen the long-dormant quarry proved to be more than worthwhile, said Tom Van Etten, president of Galloy & Van Etten, Inc., an award-winning family-owned stone fabrication company in Chicago. Van Etten led the twelve-person team that turned the Rawlins sandstone into meticulously cut and sculpted replacement pieces for the Wyoming project. “It’s a perfect match,” he said. “They found not just the right quarry, but the right stone matching in color.” 

Choosing exactly the right cuts of sandstone—matching the color of each to the existing stonework in the capitol façade—became the full-time job of preservation architect Katie Butler of CSHQA, headquartered in Boise, ID. Butler and CSHQA principal John Maulin came into the state capitol project in 2015 at the request of HDR Architecture, Inc., the architect of record. “I visited the site in Wyoming almost every other week for three years and attended numerous trips to quarries and fabricators to select the stone, review samples, and ensure the processes were in compliance with the construction documents,” said Butler. 

The process began with the team comparing a series of seven Rawlins sandstone samples, ranging in color from gray to buff, to each building level and elevation of the three building periods. “After a day on a lift, three samples were consistently found to match the existing stone at all areas,” said Butler. “These three samples established the range of colors we would use to select blocks from the Rawlins quarry.” The team visited the quarry three times between October and November 2015 to determine if the 3’ x 3’ blocks were in the correct range for color and veining. 

The project team compares samples to quarry blocks. Tom Van Etten, president of Galloy & Van Etten, led the twelve-person team that turned the Rawlins sandstone into meticulously cut and sculpted pieces for the Wyoming project. Photo courtesy State of Wyoming.

“It was quite the process,” said Butler. “At each site visit, we reviewed stone from different parts of the quarry—south pit, middle pit, and north pit. It was all the same type of sandstone but varied from each part of the quarry. It was tough trying to make sure that the underlying color and variation would be appropriate, especially with the building having been built in multiple phases.” After each visit, the team documented the process with photos and summarized it all in a field report. 

When stone became available from the Colorado quarry in Loveland for repairs of the stairs on the north and west side of the building, Butler and her team repeated this painstaking comparison until they found the right match for the existing steps. 

With this process completed, Butler and the rest of the team—Scott Evett from masonry contractor Mark 1 Restoration Company; Mike Ford, senior associate with stone restoration architect Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. (WJE); and representatives from J.E. Dunn, HDR, and the State of Wyoming met on site regularly to review mockups, trial repairs, and overall project progress. 

Enormous Scope

The process began with the team comparing a series of seven Rawlins sandstone samples, ranging in color from gray to buff, to each building level and elevation of the three building periods. “After a day on a lift, three samples were consistently found to match the existing stones at all areas,” said Butler. Photo courtesy State of Wyoming.

While the historians searched for exactly the right stone, Ford and the WJE team worked with Mark 1 Restoration to determine the scope of the required repairs. “It was about developing a repair approach that we thought was good and sound, but prioritized enough that we could do the repairs we felt were most important, deferring others,” said Ford. “We went on site, did an investigation, and provided options for repair.” 

Placing life safety above all other priorities, the WJE team discovered that the stone at the base of the building—the two courses quarried in Loveland—had deteriorated enough to raise concerns about its continued viability. A clear surface treatment had been applied to this stone in the 1990s, but it did not prevent damage from water and weather, and it “likely accelerated deterioration,” a report on the project noted. Many of the cornices and column capitals showed “severe delamination,” the document continued, also due primarily to water exposure. Some areas had been patched with mortar and stabilized with protective netting, applied years before to slow the progression of the inevitable—and to keep pieces of the façade from raining down on passersby.

The ornate elements throughout the Capitol façade had deteriorated during more than a century of Wyoming weather. Photo courtesy Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc.

When it came to the restoration of these decorative elements, Ford and his team presented the state with options. “Often people look at these projects and say, ‘I can’t do that,’ instead of ‘Yes, I can do it, and this is what it will look like,’” he said. “For example, if you have snow and it sits on cornices and ledges and it melts, it gets into the stone and it absorbs. Then it freezes, and it happens again and again—that’s called thermal cycling, or freeze/thaw. A lot of the distress we were seeing was at these projecting ledges. We said that we could do dutchman repairs to match the original, and could improve water management; however, another approach could include installation of a sheet metal flashing. This may address water management and be more cost effective, but it would have an aesthetic impact.”  

WJE installed a mockup of both the stone dutchman and flashing approach and showed the state. The state chose the dutchman approach. “That is fine; they were able to make a good decision with the mockups and an understanding of the benefits and drawbacks we presented,” said Ford. “It’s a historic building. You want to keep the historic character and integrity.” 

In all, a total of 1,135 individual pieces throughout the building’s exterior required repairs or replacement, using 3,160 cubic feet of stone. “We put the stone in a local yard until we shipped it to Galloy & Van Etten in Chicago,” said Callinan. “There were truckloads and truckloads and truckloads.”

As if the size and scope of the project were not complex enough, the original architect in the 1880s, Davis W. Gibbs, had designed just about every feature of the ornate European-inspired façade to be unique.

“As a masonry restoration fabricator, Mark 1 created a shop drawing for each additional piece,” said Callinan. This shop ticket included the type of stone, its dimensions, the dutchman repair styles required, the number of the actual block of stone from which this piece would be cut, elevation drawings, and tooling requirements. “These would be approved, and it would go into fabrication. A lot of times they oversize them a little bit, so onsite they can tool it a little bit to get a perfect fit. Some have similar profiles and textures, but each piece was fabricated for a specific place and purpose.”  

The masonry team worked to develop standardized details for categories of stone profiles—so all the cornice ledges, for example, had the same basic shape and required the same kinds of onsite work once they arrived at the job site. “Every stone on the building was assigned a number, so you could see all of these on the elevations,” said Butler. Tom and Susan Van Etten led the effort at their Chicago facility to fabricate the profile of each element, roughing in the shape and preparing it for the decorative carving to be done by hand in Cheyenne. 

On site, masons from Mark 1 installed the dutchmen that had been fabricated in Chicago at Galloy & Van Etten with planers, pneumatic chisels, combing tools and other shaping devices to create exact replicas of the original detail for each column and cornice. Portions of the building were hand-finished on site—the rock face of the base stone, for example, using a small pitching tool to remove bits of material at a time.  

Butler totaled up the various kinds of repairs the project required: four different kinds of joints, eight different resurfacing techniques, 33 kinds of dutchmen, and two types of surface treatments. “WJE and CSHQA worked as a team,” she said. “WJE reviewed each repair for structural integrity and watertightness, while CSHQA would take the lead on the aesthetic appearance. There were only a couple of occasions where we had to change something because the stone wasn’t a good match.” 

Every facet of the stone restoration required meticulous work by hand using small tools. Photo courtesy Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc.

The Reopening

Four years of overhaul—the complex’s first major renovation since 1917—resulted in a state capitol worthy of the accolades it has received. The stonework received the 2021 Grande Pinnacle Award from the Natural Stone Institute, while awards for the total project streamed in from many trade organizations: the American Public Works Association, Building Design and Construction magazine, the American Council of Engineering Companies of Colorado, the Construction Management Association of America, and Engineering-News Record Mountain States.    

“A project like this takes extraordinary skill, but it takes a team that knows who the right players are to accomplish it,” said Callinan. “It was extremely helpful to bring the right artisans to the table. The stone masons who were carving the stone onsite were the same people who worked with us on two other state capitol projects.”

State capitol restoration stands in a class of its own, said Butler, making this her favorite kind of work. “There are only fifty state capitols,” she pointed out, “so it’s a really special building type. It’s fun to see how things can be put back together and preserved without it looking like it was ever touched.”

SIMILAR ARTICLES:

The post The Perfect Match: Digging Deep to Restore the Wyoming State Capitol appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]> A Concrete Argument for Stone: Building for Longevity at Freedom Place https://usenaturalstone.org/a-concrete-argument-for-stone-building-for-longevity-at-freedom-place/ Fri, 06 Oct 2023 19:47:34 +0000 https://usenaturalstone.org/?p=11218 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.

The post A Concrete Argument for Stone: Building for Longevity at Freedom Place appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]>

Design Professionals can receive a free subscription to the print edition of Building Stone Magazine. 

A Concrete Argument for Stone: Building for Longevity at Freedom Place

|

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.

SIMILAR ARTICLES:

The post A Concrete Argument for Stone: Building for Longevity at Freedom Place appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]> Using Locally Sourced Limestone to Add Structure and Strength to Historic Preservation Projects https://usenaturalstone.org/using-locally-sourced-limestone-to-add-structure-and-strength-to-historic-preservation-projects/ Thu, 01 Jun 2023 18:15:40 +0000 https://usenaturalstone.org/?p=11044 Julia Manglitz, AIA, LEED AP, APT RP, has worked on several building types throughout her career: county courthouses, state capitols and office buildings, university campus halls and community centers. What makes each of these public buildings unique is they’re all landmarks in their communities. Another thing each of them has in common? Almost all feature locally or regionally-sourced natural stone.  

The post Using Locally Sourced Limestone to Add Structure and Strength to Historic Preservation Projects appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]>

Using Locally Sourced Limestone to Add Structure and Strength to Historic Preservation Projects

|

Julia Manglitz, AIA, LEED AP, APT RP, has worked on several building types throughout her career: county courthouses, state capitols and office buildings, university campus halls and community centers. What makes each of these public buildings unique is they’re all landmarks in their communities. Another thing each of them has in common? Almost all feature locally or regionally-sourced natural stone.

Manglitz began her work in Kansas, where limestone is plentiful. As a result, most of the older heritage and iconic buildings showcase local limestone. The featured projects were completed during her tenure as an associate principal of historic preservation at TreanorHL. She recently transitioned to senior architect with Quinn Evans.

Manglitz assessed sixty stone buildings on the Kansas State University campus in the summer of 2019. The buildings ranged in age from 20 to 143 years old; the study identified life-safety and water infiltration issues to help the University prioritize and plan façade repairs. Holton Hall (pictured here) was constructed in 1900 using Kansas Cottonwood and Junction City limestones. Photo credit TreanorHL.

Stone is one of the original regional materials

As an architect focused on historic preservation, Manglitz works with natural stone often. Stone has been used often throughout history for its durability and because it is fireproof. Manglitz notes that natural stone structures were also lower maintenance than wooden structures that required frequent repainting.  

As westward expansion began and immigrants from Germany, Sweden, Italy, England, and Ireland settled in or passed through states like Kansas, many brought with them a history of stonework and masonry. An abundance of usable stone in relatively modest sizes available in quarries throughout the Midwest made it easy to source and use.  

“There were various times of groups moving through. Some settled, some kept moving, but there were generally people around who understood what good material looks like, how to get it out of the ground, and how to get it shaped and put into buildings,” Manglitz says.

The case for regional natural stone

Kansas is known for its limestone. Manglitz notes that one of the most well-known stones is Cottonwood limestone, a light gray-to-cream-colored fine-grained limestone. Cottonwood is the main facing material for many buildings on the University of Kansas and Kansas State University campuses as well as much of the Kansas State Capitol.

Another local stone is Silverdale, a creamy limestone with gold color tones often used in split face veneer stone applications and cut limestone applications due to its tight grain and lack of holes or pits. 

“One of the more interesting stones that we run into a lot at Kansas State University is something called Neva, which is a slightly higher density limestone,” Manglitz adds. “It’s good for rough ashlar work and rock faced finishes.”

Neva is often mixed with Cottonwood, which is softer and can take a tooled finish.

The Kansas Statehouse exterior masonry restoration, completed in 2011, required over 7,000 dutchman repairs varying in size from a few pounds to several thousand. The façade features four types of limestone and seven granite, dating from the original construction to subsequent repairs. The project received a 2018 Tucker Design Award. Photo credit Aaron Doughtery/TreanorHL.

Historic preservation and natural stone

While limestone is readily available throughout the Midwest, Manglitz notes sourcing can still be challenging for historic preservation projects, since blocks are not always actively quarried in the same size that were originally used on a building. 

“Trying to get material in the size that you would like to get it can be a pretty important part of sourcing the stone,” she explains. “When we’re working in preservation, that’s really dictated by the existing building. When we have to go out looking for substitute materials, or substitute stones, it does get really challenging.”

In some cases, Manglitz is trying to match the original color on a building. Other times, she’s looking for a stone that can work with a particular finish. “A lot of the buildings that I work on have some sort of tooled finish to them or they have carvings incorporated, and trying to make sure that you can accurately replicate and get the same feel for it is important,” she says. 

OK State: From 2016 to 2020, Manglitz was the project manager for exterior masonry repairs to the 1917 Oklahoma State Capitol. The restoration included replacing veneer panels, dutchman repairs, crack pinning and injection, cleaning, and repointing. Tishomingo pink granite from Oklahoma clads the first floor, and Hoosier silver-gray from Indiana Quarries the upper floors. Photo credit F. Stop Photography/TreanorHL.

Victory Eagle connects with University of Kansas campus

Manglitz works to recommend stone based on everything from price to aesthetics. She and her team were called upon to work on a 1929 “Victory Eagle” statue in honor of Douglas County residents who lost their lives fighting in World War I. The bronze Victory Eagle monument features a mother eagle with her wings spread wide, defending her eaglets in a nest. 

The statue had seen better days after being stolen and thrown in a ditch before being rescued in the early 1980s. A new base needed to be designed before it could be relocated to Memorial Drive with other war memorials. The client initially wanted a base that wasn’t a native Kansas stone, but Manglitz recommended other stones that would be a more appropriate fit. 

Victory Eagle: The 1929 bronze sculpture, Victory Eagle, moved to a new home along Memorial Drive at the University of Kansas in 2019. The stone pedestal follows the pattern historically recommended by the Victory Highway Association, which organized the memorials in 1921 to commemorate the loss of life in World War 1. Silverdale limestone, quarried in southern Kansas, and Mountain Green granite from Coldspring form the pedestal. Photo credit Julia Mathias Manglitz.

She began by recommending granite for the first two courses. “Granite is going to hold up a lot better; it’s not going soak up de-icing salts that are likely to be used on the sidewalks and it will handle that installation much better than limestone,” she shared, adding that the dark green granite from Coldspring goes well with the overall landscape, since it sits on a site looking down into a forested valley.

The main shaft is Silverdale limestone from Kansas. “Silverdale has a little bit of a warmer color and it tends to go better with the existing architecture,” she says, again emphasizing the importance of regional stone used on other buildings throughout the area. “The more locally sourced stones historically used on the campus have a slightly warmer tone to them.”

Manglitz sees many benefits to choosing locally sourced stone over manmade materials like precast concrete in her work. She points to the lower embodied energy inherent in natural stone when compared to precast concrete as a major factor. “Precast you can do anywhere,” she says. “When you’re using a local stone product, you’re linking yourself to the history of construction within your particular region. It’s partly about place-making. It’s partly about the environment. And it’s partly thinking about durability for the next generation.” 

SIMILAR ARTICLES:

The post Using Locally Sourced Limestone to Add Structure and Strength to Historic Preservation Projects appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]> Revitalizing a Century-Old Architectural Landmark https://usenaturalstone.org/revitalizing-a-century-old-architectural-landmark/ Mon, 26 Oct 2020 16:45:42 +0000 https://usenaturalstone.org/?p=8145 Given the significant extent of limestone spalling and deterioration of this landmark, a comprehensive rehabilitation program was prepared to restore the limestone as closely as possible to its original beauty and appearance,

The post Revitalizing a Century-Old Architectural Landmark appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]>

Design Professionals can receive a free subscription to the print edition of Building Stone Magazine. 

Revitalizing a Century-Old Architectural Landmark

|

An earlier version of this article originally appeared in Building Stone Magazine.

 The London Guarantee Building, a designated Chicago Landmark, is considered one of the city’s finest examples of the Beaux Arts Classical Revival style. Located at the corner of North Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive, the building became one of Chicago’s most visible and prominent pieces of real estate when it was built in 1923. For nearly a century, the structure provided prime office space for several Chicago businesses.

After 91 years of operating as an office building, the building was converted as part of an adaptive reuse program. The project began in 2014 and was completed in late 2016, creating the LondonHouse Chicago Hotel.

 

An Extensive Façade Repair

The facades of the building are primarily clad in standard buff Indiana limestone, accented with decorative terracotta coursing at the 17th, 18th, and 21st floors. Large carved limestone colonnades, balustrades, urns, vases, and griffins provide unique enrichments throughout the facades. The building is capped with a prominent 70-foot limestone and terracotta cupola overlooking Michigan Avenue, a distinctive feature that makes it easily identifiable in a sea of similar buildings.

Given the significant extent of limestone spalling and deterioration present throughout the exterior facades, a comprehensive rehabilitation program was prepared to revitalize the neglected cladding, focusing on restoring the limestone as closely as possible to its original beauty and appearance, according to Mike Naponelli, senior associate at Klein & Hoffman (K&H) in Chicago.

“Prior to preparing repair documents, K&H performed a condition assessment covering nearly 100% of the facades in an effort to develop the scope and extent of repair work,” Naponelli said. “K&H worked closely with building ownership to ensure the program we developed adhered to both their vision and budget for the building. The repair program focused on addressing deteriorated stones in a manner which would allow the repairs to blend with the original stone coursing, texturing, and color.

“The team [of five people, consisting of architects, engineers, and inspectors] achieved this through a rigorous stone matching and preparation process,” he explained. “Each replacement stone was lightly water-blasted in-situ to provide texture and color to closely match the existing 90-year-old stones.”

Approximately 400 tons—5,000 cubic feet—of Indiana limestone were supplied by Galloy & Van Etten, Inc. in Chicago to fabricate the replacement pieces. Over 1,200 limestone units of varying sizes were replaced throughout the facades.

The team at Galloy & Van Etten, Inc. utilized a BM multi-blade gang saw to slab the blocks, planers for the profiled pieces and an Infinity CNC machine from Park Industries for the radial work. Park Industries’ Jaguar Pro 3000, as well as saws from Tysaman and Sawing Systems, were also used for cutting the stone.

“All stone was either planer-or sand finished, then water-blasted to give it a weathered finish to match the existing stone,” said Tom Van Etten, owner of Galloy & Van Etten, Inc.

To add to the building’s green design and avoid unnecessary repairs, existing limestone from the building was salvaged and reused as much as possible. “Defects from large stones would be cut out and the remaining stone would be used elsewhere on the building as replacement stones or Dutchman piece-ins,” Naponelli said.

“Mock-ups were not needed, as we used the existing damaged stone as templates to fabricate the new pieces,” Van Etten added.

 

Merging Old and New

Matching all of the existing profiles and carving was a difficult process, which required great attention to detail. “In some cases, the stone was so deteriorated that we had to recreate the existing pieces before we could fabricate the new pieces,” Van Etten explained. “The most difficult part of the job was matching the large Dutchmen for the fluted columns and carved capitals at the front entrance. We’re quite proud of the fact that you cannot differentiate the new stone from the existing.”

In stone masonry, Dutchmen are stone insets selectively replacing only the fault in stone with new or reused stone material. The Corinthian column capitals at the building’s main entrance were damaged and missing large sections of the acanthus leaves and scrolls, as Van Etten mentions, so ornate Dutchmen were installed and final detailing was hand-carved in-situ to allow for the capitals’ elegant details to be matched precisely.

During the installation, accessing and maneuvering the several-thousand-pound replacement and reset stone pieces more than 20 stories above grading provide to be especially challenging, according to Naponelli and Don Seefeldt, senior executive vice president at Mark 1 Restoration Company in Dolton, IL, which completed the exterior installation.

“Ten limestone urns were reset across the rooftop parapet,” Naponelli said. “Each urn weighed approximately 4,000 pounds and required a crane to lift the decorative features. The urns had been removed 15 years prior because of significant outward displacement and concern that they may fall 21 stories to the sidewalks below.”

Most of the work was performed from swing-stage scaffolds. However, the degree of façade repair at the upper floors was so extensive that pipe scaffolding was erected from platforms cantilevered out as a putlog system for the 18th floor windows, allowing for the repairs to be performed. At these locations, entire cornices and belt courses were removed and rebuilt.

“The location of some of these stones presented a challenge in that cranes and hoists had to be used, and pipe scaffolding had to be erected on platforms in order to allow the work to be done safely,” Seefeldt explained. “In addition, the very busy intersection of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue was also a significant challenge to ensure safety to pedestrians and traffic below.”

A crew of around 40 people from Mark 1 Restoration Company was required to complete the installation. From assessment through installation, the project took around two years to complete and has since received many awards, including a 2019 Natural Stone Institute Pinnacle Award in the Renovation/Restoration category.

“It was a great pleasure to work on such an iconic building in Chicago and to help restore it to its original grandeur,” Naponelli said. “The project would not have been a great success without the incredible talent from the repair contractor and the stone supplier.”

TAGS:  case study limestone historical renovation heather fiore inspire

SIMILAR ARTICLES:

The post Revitalizing a Century-Old Architectural Landmark appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]> Perry World House: How the University of Pennsylvania Used Natural Stone to Transform its Oldest Building https://usenaturalstone.org/perry-world-house-how-the-university-of-pennsylvania-used-natural-stone-to-transform-its-oldest-building/ Fri, 28 Feb 2020 22:19:45 +0000 https://usenaturalstone.org/?p=7479 The 17,400 square foot academic building features limestone cladding inside and out. It received a Pinnacle Award in the Commercial Exterior category, "an amazing transformation of a declining historic house into a vibrant modern jewel of an office building."

The post Perry World House: How the University of Pennsylvania Used Natural Stone to Transform its Oldest Building appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]>

Design Professionals can receive a free subscription to the print edition of Building Stone Magazine. 

Perry World House: How the University of Pennsylvania Used Natural Stone to Transform its Oldest Building

|

An earlier version of this article appeared in Building Stone Magazine.

 

The newest building on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia, PA is Perry World House. As a hub for international exchange and activity, the Perry World House anchors Penn’s global resources on an interdisciplinary campus while creating partnerships abroad. The building offers a wide range of spaces, including classrooms, meeting rooms, 14 offices, a 50-person conference room and common rooms. A glass-enclosed atrium called the World Forum occupies the building’s heart and is used as a multipurpose events space. The 17,400 square foot academic building combines the oldest building on the University campus—a historic house built in 1851—with a new Renaissance Beige limestone-clad structure.

According to Ed Parker, principal architect of 1100 Architect, the goal for the project was to create a new focal point for global policy research and international affairs at the University of Pennsylvania. “Shared by each of the university’s 12 schools, the building would need to support interdisciplinary exchange and a wide range of programs, from small-group study to 200-person events. Destined for a university campus with such a singular history of architectural achievement, the design, of course, would need to take the building’s context into careful account.”

A portion of the original house was salvaged and reconstructed, per historic documentation, and its faux limestone stucco is referenced in the new addition, which is clad in natural limestone both inside and out. Merging old and new architectural styles offers the added benefit of matching both the pedestrian scale of Locust Walk on one side and the busy urban scale of 38th Street on the other. ABC Worldwide Stone was responsible for sourcing, selecting, quality checks, logistics and fabrication approvals on all 1,850 cubic feet of Renaissance Beige limestone.

“This project began like pretty much everything we do here at ABC, an in-depth conversation with the architect,” said Ken Saretsky of ABC Worldwide Stone. “We listen and learn as much as we can about the client, project site, scope of work, the climate, application, budget and schedule. This dialogue leads to sampling and slab viewing here at our facility. We also provide preliminary budgeting, test data and images of projects that have used the same material. This project also spent a fair amount of time with finishes and, more importantly, engineering due to the unique geometry of the building. The complex form of the Perry World House structure, combined with the necessary exactitude involved in dealing with large panels of limestone, required an innovative approach to stone engineering. Further, we wanted to be respectful of the natural slope and grade of the surrounding landscape. The new structure was to be erected without impinging on or greatly changing the natural state of the land it was to sit upon.”

The project also presented more of a natural test — trying to find consistency in the large quantity of limestone that was specified. “We flew to Germany and handpicked materials several times throughout the process to ensure reasonable uniformity,” said Saretsky. “Further, we knew that any error in installation tolerances would stop the installation and cause scheduling delays and have serious cost impacts. The potential consequences of errors in installation tolerances demanded a thorough process of managing and verifying during the early engineering phases. We also had to account for the innate complexities involved with designs containing several integral mitered connections.”

“Stone was integral to our design in many ways,” said Parker. “The building occupies a prominent site on campus, directly adjacent to the University president’s house, across the street from The Wharton School of Business, and along the main pedestrian thoroughfare, Locust Walk. We used stone differently for each elevation, tailoring the building to those different contexts. The stone allowed us to modulate the building’s scale, exerting a strong presence along the edge that faces a six-lane road, but becoming more residentially scaled on those edges that face a pedestrian path and campus houses. We selected Jura limestone for its performance characteristics, value and unique aesthetic veining. We considered other limestones but, with the client, determined Jura to be best suited for this project due to these considerations.”

According to stone installer Edward Gilpin of Belfi Brothers, “We had six guys installing stone every day in a mortar bed installation. The stone was a nice product and ABC Worldwide Stone was excellent to deal with. I think overall everyone is pleased with the results.”

This was the first time in the U.S. that this vein-cut selection of the Renaissance Beige had been used for a cladding project. The interior design features Renaissance Beige limestone with a crosscut and honed finish — totaling 3,500 square feet of 12- x 24- x 5/8-inch-thick, cut-to-size pavers and various 1 1/4-inch-thick treads, platforms and risers.

“We used the Jura vein cut for the façade part of the interior walls, which are an extension of the façade so that the stratification of the sedimentary layers were exposed in the orientation it had in the ground,” said Parker. “We also used it on the floor of the interior of the building but in a cut that was parallel to the layers so (similarly) it was oriented in the way it would be naturally.”

With its open and flexible spaces, the Perry World House reflects and supports the aims of the institution it houses. The goal was to create an environment filled with natural light, where different perspectives can be discussed in different types of settings. Transparency between spaces reinforces an emphasis on cooperation between academic disciplines and varying world views, while the dialogue of the 19th-century cottage and a 21st-century building gives form to the timelessness of
these pursuits.

“This project is architecturally significant,” said Saretsky. “It’s prominently located at one of America’s most prestigious universities. David Piscuskas and his team at 1100 Architects cleverly married a historic building from 1851 with a new incredible stealth-like facade. The juxtaposition of old and new makes for a truly unique structure.”

The project received a 2017 Pinnacle Award in the Commercial Exterior category. Jurors called the project an amazing transformation of a declining historic house into a vibrant modern jewel of an office building.

TAGS:  restoration limestone case study historical educate

SIMILAR ARTICLES:

The post Perry World House: How the University of Pennsylvania Used Natural Stone to Transform its Oldest Building appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]> What to Expect During a Natural Stone Restoration https://usenaturalstone.org/what-to-expect-during-a-natural-stone-restoration/ Thu, 06 Dec 2018 01:06:42 +0000 https://usenaturalstone.org/?p=4716 Restoring your stone can bring it back to the look and luster it had when it was originally installed. Part of the beauty of natural stone is that the process can be repeated without worry so you can enjoy your investment for a lifetime.

The post What to Expect During a Natural Stone Restoration appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]>

What to Expect During a Natural Stone Restoration

|

Photo by International Stoneworks, Inc.

Normal wear and tear and damaging chemicals can affect the finishes of your natural stone surfaces. Fortunately, natural stone is a durable material that can be brought back to life with professional stone restoration. Knowing when it’s time to restore will depend on two factors, says Jacqueline Tabbah, vice president of International Stoneworks in Houston, Texas.

“First is what type of stone you have,” she says. “Certain stones, like marble, travertine, or limestone, are acid sensitive. It’s very hard in a kitchen or bar to avoid any spilling of things that can etch the stone, and these stones will usually need to be restored more often.”

The second factor is how the stone has been maintained. Using neutral cleaners will keep your stone looking good longer, but harsher chemicals can quickly damage the finish of certain stones, says Tabbah.

“If someone were to clean a marble surface with vinegar, it would need to be restored the next day,” she says.

The Process

Polishing white marble. Photo courtesy of International Stoneworks, Inc.

If your stone looks soiled or worn, a reputable stone restoration company will send an estimator to your home to diagnose your project and determine whether it needs light maintenance, maintenance, restoration, or repair, says James Paley, president of ATLAS Marble and Stone Care in Santa Ana, California.

“They will ask you who installed the stone, what cleaners you use and what bothers you most about the stone,” he says. “Polished surfaces need to be restored more often than honed because you don’t notice etches and scratches as much with honed surfaces.”

Grout joints are the biggest storyteller, adds Paley. “They can be stained or dirty from improper care, but they can also be cracked and degraded, which presents problems beyond maintenance,” he says. “A good estimator will determine if the surface needs cleaning and sealing, repolishing, rehoning, or repair.”

The restoration process is similar to wet sanding and involves the application of a cream or powder abrasive, says Tabbah. If the stone has extensive damage, the restorer will use a floor or hand machine with an industrial diamond disc. The process exfoliates the surface of the stone. Then, depending on the finish, the stone will be repolished or rehoned.

Restoration could take multiple days to complete, says Scott Calabritto, national technical director for SOLID Surface Care in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Photo by International Stoneworks, Inc.

“It’s an intricate process that takes between three and seven steps,” he says. “The timeframe is often longer than most people expect.”

“Restoration isn’t simply squirting a topical wax on surface,” adds Tabbah. “The extent of the process depends on the condition, size and how much TLC is needed.”

Communication with your restorer throughout the process is key. In case of kitchen or bathroom countertop, for example, determine who will remove the fixtures of the sink, says Calabritto. “Otherwise the restorer can get as close as they can, but you can have halo effect around faucet and dispensers,” he says.

When it comes to floors, discuss who will move the furniture. “A lot of contractors will not move furniture because it’s a different liability class for their insurance,” says Calabritto.

After Restoration

Photo courtesy of International Stoneworks, Inc.

Once the process is complete, the restorer will typically seal the stone. How quickly you can use it will depend on the surface.

“It can be dry to touch but the sealer might need to cure and will not be effective for a certain amount of hours,” says Tabbah. “You should allow a shower to cure overnight. For kitchen countertops, feel free to set something down, but don’t do a big fried chicken dinner that night.”

The contractor should also provide care instructions and general housekeeping tips, says Calabritto. “You will want to keep the surface clean with a good stone soap,” he says. “Dusting the surface to remove grit and residue is advised.”

“A lot of homeowners wonder why sealing doesn’t provide protection,” Tabbah says. “The sealers that restorers use are penetrating sealers, not a coating or wax. They soak into the pores of the stone and help repel grease or oil, but they don’t stop acid or other chemicals from etching or slightly burning the surface.”

Sealed granite countertops and island. Photo by International Stoneworks, Inc.

Restoring your stone can bring it back to the look and luster it had when it was originally installed. Part of the beauty of natural stone is that the process can be repeated without worry so you can enjoy your investment for a lifetime.

“Proper restoration doesn’t compromise the integrity of the stone,” says Tabbah. “You could do it on an annual basis and be fine.”

It is important to note that misdiagnosed and incorrectly applied restoration techniques can cause more harm than good. Make sure to use an established restoration contractor with a proven list of satisfied clients.

TAGS:  restoration residential cleaning educate stephanie vozza

SIMILAR ARTICLES:

The post What to Expect During a Natural Stone Restoration appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]> Recapturing the Lost Beauty of Stone at the Peninsula Paris https://usenaturalstone.org/peninsula-paris/ Wed, 27 Jun 2018 01:07:09 +0000 http://usenaturalstone.org/?p=4032 After an exhaustive 4-year renovation of The Peninsula Paris, the century-old building took a giant leap back to reclaim its rightful place among the city’s most impressive architectural structures.

The post Recapturing the Lost Beauty of Stone at the Peninsula Paris appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]>

Recapturing the Lost Beauty of Stone at the Peninsula Paris

|

After a four-year renovation, a historic hotel in Paris reclaims its place among the city’s most impressive buildings.

The Peninsula Paris is just steps from the Arc de Triomphe, but after an exhaustive years-long renovation, the century-old building took a giant leap back to reclaim its rightful place among the city’s most impressive architectural structures. And this being Paris, that’s saying a lot.

The six-story, 200-room luxury property re-opened its doors in 2014. A testament to the excruciatingly detailed nature of the restoration is that the original hotel took two years to build. Renovating it took twice as long.

The project was led by Paris-based restoration specialists Affine Design whose portfolio includes not only luxury hotels, but palaces. The firm’s mission is easy to grasp yet demands extraordinary mastery to execute: preserve the soul of a historic space by teasing out its stories and legends. In restoring the character of The Peninsula Paris, Affine Design aimed to give it a new architectural framework and context for fitting into its historical, geographical, and social roots.

A restoration project of this scope, expense, and scale is rare today. The structure was in rough shape. Multidisciplinary teams of restorers, artisans, craftspeople, gilders, and glazers—some 3,000 over the course of the renovation—were tasked with correcting poorly executed renovations and reversing years of neglect.

Original stone elements were badly damaged or caked in dirt. The façade had fallen into disrepair. Once-gracious moldings and design details were covered up behind false walls, partitions and ceilings. Affine Design officials characterized the modifications and alterations of the original building over its history as “brutal.”

The new façade used limestone from the very same French quarries in St Leu-la-Foret, Chauvigny and Comblanchien as the original structure, which opened as the Hotel Majestic in 1908. Twenty stonemasons from the monument specialist Degaine restored the area with intricate carvings of stone flowers, bows and ribbons. Each flower cascade took a single stonemason three weeks to complete. Wherever possible, missing pieces were carved by hand. In other cases, beyond-repair bas-reliefs were replaced with new stone sections, installed and hand-carved from scratch. Details were re-created from original documents and photos that were scrutinized and used as reference.

Fish scale-shaped roof tiles for the hotel’s towers were sourced from slate quarries in the Pays de la Loire region and fashioned by hand. Marble for columns was sourced near Campan in the French Pyrenees.

Affine Design, under the direction of its chief architect and founder Richard Martinet, worked with France’s heritage organizations including Les Architectes des Batiments de France, Les Monuments Historiques and La Commission du Vieux Paris to follow preservation protocols. Altering the building’s exterior, for instance, was forbidden. Many specialized teams came with a provenance having worked on heritage projects like the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles or international commissions involving the Statue of Liberty, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Some were family firms dating back generations.

When the hotel, built in the Second Empire style popular at the time, opened its doors for the first time last century, it immediately became the see-and-be-seen spot of high society. George Gershwin composed his classic “An American in Paris” here. It was also where the likes of Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, and Igor Stravinsky wined and dined. Between the first incarnation as Hotel Majestic and its current as The Peninsula Paris, the building was repurposed for a succession of uses. In 1936, it was sold to the French government and eventually converted to UNESCO headquarters. Later it transformed into an international conference center for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No shortage of monumental events occurred under the ministry’s auspices, the most high profile of which was the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, which ended the Vietnam War. The space in now Bar Kléber.

From the start, the goal of the renovation was to blend new and old, to marry the limestone facades of the Haussmann style that makes the Parisian streetscape architecture so distinct with 21st century engineering feats and materials. The structure had to be reconstructed on a metal frame. The amount of steel used weighed the equivalent of five French high speed trains and the concrete used was equal to three times the weight of the Eiffel Tower.

Of the process, Affine Design’s Martinent once noted: “There was great joy in tearing down the ugliness and finding beauty underneath.”

TAGS:  restoration historical carving inspire iyna bort caruso

SIMILAR ARTICLES:

stone craftsmanship

The post Recapturing the Lost Beauty of Stone at the Peninsula Paris appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]> An Education Carved in Stone https://usenaturalstone.org/education-carved-stone/ Mon, 09 Oct 2017 20:29:09 +0000 http://usenaturalstone.org/?p=3291 In a world of bytes and bites, the next generation of artisans is still studying with mallets and chisels and doing its part to carry over an ancient trade to another century.

The post An Education Carved in Stone appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]>

An Education Carved in Stone

|

For most schools, establishing a campus in a former trolley barn would be enough to distinguish it from other colleges. But that’s not the real differentiator for the American College of the Building Arts (ACBA). The Charleston, South Carolina-based institution is the first in the country to offer four-year degrees in traditional craft specializations, including architectural stone carving.

An ACBA student carves a stone mantle. Photo courtesy of the American College of the Building Arts.

In a world of bytes and bites, the next generation of artisans is still studying with mallets and chisels and doing its part to carry over an ancient trade to another century. In training students, ACBA is helping to preserve America’s architectural heritage while elevating the stature of what some say is an underrated profession.

An early iteration of the school was as a nonprofit, offering a series of classes and workshops in response to the devastation left by Hurricane Hugo in 1989, a category four hurricane. By one account, more than 2,000 historic structures in Charleston alone were damaged or destroyed, and it immediately became clear the armies of trained artisans needed to handle the rebuilding and restoration in its aftermath were in short supply.

The program later evolved and expanded into a degree-granting college. Seven students made up the inaugural graduating class of 2009. For the better part of its young history, most classes took place at the Old Jail in downtown Charleston. Built in 1802 and decommissioned in 1939, the jail served as a training lab in which students studied restoration and preservation methods and put them into use on parts of the building itself. The school eventually outgrew the jail and last year moved into another historic structure, a renovated trolley barn.

Enrollment is small—roughly 20 full-time students. About half skew slightly older. “They’ve been and done something,” says Simeon Warren, an architectural stone carver, dean emeritus, and teacher. “They’ve figured out what they want to do with their lives and are now coming back.” Students hail from all parts of the country but they share a belief in the worth of the work and a passion for mastering the kind of skills that leave a lasting legacy, Warren says.

The American College of the Building Arts. Photo courtesy of Jason W. Kaumeyer.

ACBA offers six craft specializations including carpentry, timber framing, and architectural iron. Stone carving falls within the traditional masonry program, which provides freshmen and sophomores a foundation in the three subject areas of architectural stone, masonry, and plaster. Juniors and seniors then go on to specialize in one of the three preservation trades.

Students working in stone use largely the same methods and hand tools as those used in the original construction of Charleston’s 18th and 19th century buildings. They also master new techniques and technologies that have made the trade faster, more precise, and more efficient. Classroom and studio learning is supplemented with real-world experience by way of summer internships, both in the U.S. and abroad.

Students learn soft skills, too.  Stone carving is as much about patience, concentration, and critical thinking as it is about the ability to manipulate materials.

“You can’t rush through it,” says 2017 graduate Daniella Helline. “You have to take the time, get to know the material and learn how to use your tools the right way.”

Helline, originally from Rock Hill, South Carolina, was a senior in high school when she first toured the ACBA campus. “I fell in love with it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I’d always been creative, but I didn’t have any experience in any of the trades. I loved the fact that you could go to school where you did something with your hands every day,” she says.

Double infinity window inspired by Lincoln cathedral’s Bishop Eye. Designed by Simeon Warren and Cody James. Carved by Simeon Warren, Cody James, Daniella Helline, and Sam Friedman.

One class project Helline worked on is coming to fruition, the stone carving of a double infinity window, which will be installed in the ACBA library. The design was inspired by a large stained glass rose window called the Bishop’s Eye at the Lincoln Cathedral in England, where her British-born instructor Simeon Warren once apprenticed and Helline interned.

Ask Helline what goes through her mind while she’s stone carving and she doesn’t hesitate: “Don’t mess up. Carving is a reductive trade. You’re taking away material.

You can’t mess up because you’ll see the mistakes.”

As for the future, Helline has her sights set on the past. “I love restoration. I love old buildings and the idea of being able to keep buildings alive.” She’ll be doing that in Charleston, contributing to the preservation of the city’s historic building stock.

Helline is also part of a “cultural shift that recognizes the importance of the manual labor trades,” says Warren. “Until very recently, society assigned manual work less value. But we’re coming full circle.” Handcrafted is in. Maker industries are in. And the job outlook looks bright. Warren says, “We’re losing the last generation of artisans skilled at handling restoration of the country’s aging housing stock. If we train people to build quality new work and also conserve our historic fabric at same time, not only are we building structures that will become valuable, but we’re maintaining of the legacy of what we believe in as human beings.”

TAGS: carving art restoration inspire education iyna bort caruso

SIMILAR ARTICLES:

sandstone heritage stone craftsmanship

The post An Education Carved in Stone appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]> Stone Craftsmanship: A Rare and Irreplaceable Skill https://usenaturalstone.org/stone-craftsmanship-rare-irreplaceable-skill/ Fri, 14 Jul 2017 08:21:28 +0000 http://usenaturalstone.org/?p=2988 Stone carvers today uses a combination of modern machinery and ancient craftsmanship to restore buildings and sculptures to their former magnificence.

The post Stone Craftsmanship: A Rare and Irreplaceable Skill appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]>

Stone Craftsmanship: A Rare and Irreplaceable Skill

|

Stone carving—the fine art of chiseling natural stone into intricate interwoven leaves atop a column or angels gracing a cathedral portico—is uncommon enough that some people believe the craft no longer exists.

But though fewer in number than they were in the glory days of the 1800s and earlier, stone carvers are still working, and their skills are indispensable. Using a combination of modern machinery and ancient craftsmanship, they restore churches, universities, and city buildings to their former magnificence. Increasingly, they are also plying their trade in high-end homes and commercial buildings whose owners want a distinctive, majestic touch.

Photo courtesy of Red Leaf Stone.

Meet a Modern-Day Stone Carver

Tony Rogac, a stone carver who works for the Red Leaf Group in Vancouver, has been working with stone since he trained with a firm restoring Worcester Cathedral in his native England over 40 years ago. He has done everything from restoration work to elaborately carved fireplaces for high-end homes and heraldic crests for modern businesses.

Photo courtesy of Red Leaf Stone.

“It’s a skill, but also an art—you have a little license in the execution,” he says of stone carving. His projects are many and varied.

In Gastown, an old part of Vancouver, he rebuilt an ornate arch with floral carving above a building dating to the 1860s gold rush, carving flowers and griffins into 80,000 pounds of Indiana limestone.

For the Vermeer, an award-winning retail and condo complex built four years ago in Vancouver, he carved medieval-looking shields embedded with tulips and dragons. He is currently working on a stone cougar that will crouch above Red Leaf’s own entrance.

Like most of today’s artisans, Rogac usually does his fine hand carving after a modern machine has done its work. The computer numeric control router, or CNC, as it’s known in the trade, is a machine with a rotating blade guided by software that contains files with design specifications. It does about 80 percent of the carving for most jobs.

“You might think an old stone mason would be a Luddite, but I think the CNC is a great aid,” he said.

Hand carving is essential for achieving an authentic, intricate look. “It’s a marriage of machinery and craftsmanship,” said Steffen Waite, Red Leaf Group’s owner. Few clients would be able to afford sculptures and bas reliefs carved entirely by hand, he added.

Painstaking Work

Because of their high visibility and prominence, stone carvings have to be done with extreme care.  Nowhere is this truer than at the Rotunda, the centerpiece of the Thomas Jefferson-designed University of Virginia, which is a United Nations World Heritage site.

Photo Courtesy of Rugo Stone.

The Rotunda’s 16 original Carrara marble Corinthian capitals were destroyed in a 1895 fire that also consumed much of the rest of the building. Renowned architect Stanford White restored the building, but over a hundred years later, the carved acanthus leaves over the capitals had eroded and begun to fall off, posing a safety hazard.

Last year, Virginia firm Rugo Stone did a 3D scanning of the bits and pieces of capital tops that remained. Workers gleaned what they could from an 1895 distance photograph. The company hired carvers from Italy, whose sketches and models had to go through layers of approval. In the end, the capitals were restored to their former glory in a style experts believe Jefferson would have approved of, though his original drawings no longer exist.

Modern Demand

Like Red Leaf, Rugo Stone also does stone carving in high-end homes, which have become its major source of business.

“People are using white marble—it’s a trend,” said Rugo sales and marketing manager Sam Arcot. “Even with more artificial materials coming into the market, the demand for natural stone has been steadily growing.”

Photo Courtesy of Rugo Stone.

Another source of demand is churches, which need skilled hands to carve sculptures of religious figures. Rugo is currently restoring several elaborately carved chapels at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC and has done carvings for many other churches, as well as for Duke University’s Divinity School.

The art of carving stone is traditionally passed from generation to generation through apprenticeships, but with fewer stonemasons left to pass on their skills, its survival is uncertain. In the United States, the American College of Building Arts offers bachelor’s degrees in classic building trades, including architectural stone carving. In Ireland, an entrepreneur opened a Stone Mastery Academy, enabling passionate practitioners to transmit their knowledge. As long as people are drawn to natural stone, there will be plenty of work available for those with the right skills and experience.

TAGS:  art carving inspire feel good restoration teresa meek

SIMILAR ARTICLES:

sandstone heritage education carved in stone natural stone sculptures

The post Stone Craftsmanship: A Rare and Irreplaceable Skill appeared first on Use Natural Stone.

]]>