Preservation Thought for the Day

 "Architecture has no spectators, only participants."  -- James Marston Fitch

Preservation Thought for Labor Day

“Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.” – Adam Smith

Historic preservation quote of the day

“When you strip away the rhetoric, preservation is simply having the good sense to hold on to things that are well designed, that link us with our past in a meaningful way, and that have plenty of good use left in them.” – Richard Moe, National Trust for Historic Preservation

Detail, left:  The Old State House, Boston, Mass.

Preservation consulting and project management you can trust

About Olde Mohawk Masonry & Historic Restoration

 

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Olde Mohawk Masonry & Historic Restoration, its owner, employees and consultants, to provide prompt, competent, ethical, thorough, and appropriate services to its clients. Anything less than attainment of this goal is unacceptable. All practices and methodologies employed are in strict compliance with guidelines set forth by the Secretary of the Interior. On a municipal level, many communities maintain a level of vigilance specific to buildings in historic neighborhoods. Working with historic homeowners and the stewards of landmark structures within these communities, Olde Mohawk Masonry & Historic Restoration is committed to preserving the fabric that defines the heritage of the region’s built environment.

 

Services

·         Devise strategies for the adaptive re-use of historic structures

·         Assess the condition of the envelope and specify work in an historically appropriate manner
·         Develop RFQ's, bid packages and engineered estimates of cost
·         Perform due diligence investigations, screening potential contractors
·         Supervise and manage projects, or act as the owner's rep
·         Act as liaison to federal, state and municipal agencies and commissions
·         Advise institutions and organizations in all manner of preservation issues
 

Specialties

·       ·         Historic Structure Reports and Building Conditions Assessments

·         Preservation Planning, Building Surveys and NRHP Nominations
·         Architectural Materials Testing and Analysis
·         Brick and Stone Masonry Preservation and Cleaning
·         Slate, Clay Tile and Cedar Shingle Roofing
·         Sheet Metalwork including Copper Detail Fabrication
·         Low Slope, TPO, Modified Bitumen, and EPDM Roofing
·         Built-In, Box and Yankee-Style Gutters
·         Structural Repair of Foundations, Steel and Timber Framework
·         Historic Woodwork Replication and Restoration

Professional Memberships and Associations

·         Traditional Roofing Network

·         Preservation Massachusetts
·         National Slate Association
·         Slate Roofing Contractors' Association
·         Building Industry Employers Association (NYS)
·         Eastern Contractors Association of New York
·         Preservation League of New York State
·         Historic New England
·         National Trust for Historic Preservation
·         Corporate Sponsor, Slate Valley Museum

Partial Project and Client List

NY State Armory, Hudson, NY: historic structure report and NRHP registration

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Hoosick Falls, NY:  envelope conditions assessment

President Chester A. Arthur gravesite, Albany Rural Cemetery, NY: conditions assessment

First Congregational Church, Hyde Park, MA:  envelope conditions assessment

Trustee’s Office & Store, Hancock Shaker Village, Pittsfield, MA:  building survey, exterior conditions and architectural materials testing

Slate Crypts at the Old Salem Burying Ground, Salem, NY:  conditions assessment and architectural materials testing

Malcolm X – Ella Collins-Little House, Roxbury, MA:  envelope conditions assessment

Church of the Immaculate Conception, Cambridge, MA:  roof conditions assessment

Amherst Town Hall, Amherst, MA:  roof conditions assessment

Mt. Hood Tower, Melrose, MA:  exterior/masonry conditions assessment

Kellogg Terrace, Great Barrington, MA:  conditions assessment and documentation of structural/mechanical systems

Tremont Temple Baptist Church, Boston, MA:  envelope conditions assessment

Putnam High School, Springfield, MA:  envelope conditions assessment

Trinity Church, Melrose, MA:  envelope conditions assessment

Anna Clapp-Harris House, Boston MA:  envelope conditions assessment and documentation of structural systems

Perley School, Georgetown, MA:  roof conditions assessment

High Service Station at Chestnut Hill Reservoir, Brookline, MA:  assessment of envelope conditions and interior moisture issues

Grace Episcopal Church, Medford, MA:  architectural materials testing

St. George’s Episcopal Church, Schenectady, NY:  steeple conditions assessment

Harry F. Sinclair House, New York, NY:  roof conditions assessment

James Bailey House, New York NY:  roof conditions assessment

Saratoga Visitors Center, Saratoga Springs, NY:  roof conditions assessment

Walker Memorial Library, Westbrook ME:  envelope conditions assessment

Belcourt, Newport, RI:  roof conditions assessment

Jan van Mabie Historic Site, Rotterdam Junction, NY:  conditions assessment, architectural materials testing and building surveys

First Presbyterian Church, Troy, NY:  envelope conditions assessment

Click on the image to the left to connect with us now

 

Preservation thoughts for the day

"Memory is reality. It is better to recycle what exists, to avoid mortgaging a workable past to a non-existent future, and to think small. In the life of cities, only conservation is sanity."  -- Robert Hughes

 "Saving old buildings and neighborhoods is an enormously effective way to provide continuity in the places where we live.” – Dwight Young

“All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.” -- John Ruskin

 At left:  Grace Episcopal Church, Medford, Mass., H. H. Richardson, ca 1867.  The steeple is nearly scaffolded and our repointing work will continue soon. 

Preservation thoughts for the day

"It is better to preserve than to repair, better to repair than to restore, better to restore than to reconstruct."  -- A. N. Didron, archaeologist, Bulletin Archeologique, Vol. 1, 1839

"The preservation movement has one great curiosity. There is never retrospective controversy or regret. Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

"Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings." -- Jane Jacobs

At left:  Late 17th century joinery.   We became invoved in the Anna Clapp-Harris House in Dorchester, Mass., through our work with Historic Boston, Inc.

The Armory Townhouse project: A sneak peek

On Friday I will be presenting a new rendering to the Hudson Historic Preservation Commission during a design work shop at 9 am:

This new design respects the structure as depicted in the below image:

We are very excited about this new plan and look forward to working with the HPC to make it a reality.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall...

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Robert Frost's Mending Wall wasn't about brick masonry walls (or stone walls either, really - but this isn't an American Literature course.)  These images were taken last week at the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.  A beautiful, 1837 Greek Revival structure, much of the original fabric has survived 175 years.  The pictures above show the damage that can be created by repointing with an inappropriate cement mortar.  The brick has a relatively low compressive strength and was laid in a lime putty mortar.  The new portland cement-based mortar has a high compressive strength.  When the moisture in the face of the brick feezes and expands the mortar joint does not fail--the brick does.  The face spalls and pops off.

CONTACT us today to discuss your preservation consulting and contracting needs

Preservation thought for the day

Three quotes from the great John Ruskin:

"When we build let us think we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work that our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone upon stone, that a time is to come when these stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, 'See! This our fathers did for us.'"

"Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last."

"... I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people when their houses are built to last for one generation only. There is a sanctity in a good man’s house which cannot be renewed in every tenement that rises on its ruins ..."

Repoint: Not your average word (at all)

"Repointing, also known simply as 'pointing' or--somewhat inaccurately--'tuck pointing' is the process of removing deteriorated mortar from the joints of a masonry wall and replacing it with new mortar. Properly done, repointing restores the visual and physical integrity of the masonry. Improperly done, repointing not only detracts from the appearance of the building, but may also cause physical damage to the masonry units themselves." [1]

That certainly sounds important. The International Masonry Institute (IMI), which is the training arm of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Crafts (BAC), has an instructional manual titled Repointing Masonry Walls. The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Rehabilitation of Historic Structures discusses repointing masonry rather extensively. The CSI Master Format, used by AIA architects to specify work in the US and elsewhere, has entire sections dedicated to repointing brick and stone masonry.  The American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI) train their members to recommend repointing masonry that has deteriorated mortar joints.  Publications like 'This Old House,' 'Fine Homebuilding' and Clem Labine's various journals print articles on the topic regularly.  That covers a pretty broad demographic.

Would you be surprised to learn that, technically, repoint is not a word?  So, how does it become a word?  I've done some research and found this out:

To decide which words to include in the dictionary and to determine what they mean, Merriam-Webster editors study the language as it's used. They carefully monitor which words people use most often and how they use them.  Each day most Merriam-Webster editors devote an hour or two to reading a cross section of published material, including books, newspapers, magazines, and electronic publications; in our office this activity is called "reading and marking."  The marked passages are then input into a computer system and stored both in machine-readable form and on 3" x 5" slips of paper to create citations.   Each citation has the following elements:

1. the word itself
2. an example of the word used in context
3. bibliographic information about the source from which the word and example were taken

Before a new word can be added to the dictionary, it must have enough citations to show that it is widely used. But having a lot of citations is not enough; in fact, a large number of citations might even make a word more difficult to define, because many citations show too little about the meaning of a word to be helpful. A word may be rejected for entry into a general dictionary if all of its citations come from a single source or if they are all from highly specialized publications that reflect the jargon of experts within a single field. [2]

To be included in a Merriam-Webster dictionary, a word must be used in a substantial number of citations that come from a wide range of publications over a considerable period of time. Specifically, the word must have enough citations to allow accurate judgments about its establishment, currency, and meaning.  Does repoint satisfy this criteria?  I sure think so and I'm leading an initiative to add it to the dictionary--check out my old license plate!

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[1] Mack, Robert C., FAIA, and Speweik, John P. Repointing Mortar Joints in Historic Masonry Buildings. Technical Preservation Services, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior

[2] How does a word get into Merriam-Webster Dictionary?  http://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq/words_in.htm