BSA Historic Resources Committee Meeting Notes for June 2006
Present: Olga Bachilova, Bill Barry, Matthew Bronski, Taya Dixon, Marilyn Fenollosa, Allan Galper, David Hart, John Hecker, David Kelman, David King, Kristin McFadden, Bill Mack, Krista MacFadden, Doug Manley, Henry Moss, Ivan Myjer, Bill Remsen, Roberto Rosa, Susan Schur, Regan Shields, Malcolm Smiley, Jonathan Smith, Jean Van Orman, Sara Wermiel, and Gary Wolf
1. Brownstone Conference in Portland: Ivan Myjer reported that this symposium, the first on this subject since the Technology & Conservation conference in 2000, was bracingly concise and scientific in its content. It is as though the understanding of failure mechanisms and appropriate (or inappropriate) treatments have suddenly leapt forward. New studies have revealed that the primary failure mechanism in brown sandstone may be the swelling of clay particles, especially when combined with the effects of salt crystallization. Freeze/thaw may be the secondary actor once fissures have begun. Ivan has always looked askance at exaggerated (i.e., typical) claims for the curative powers of consolidants, and this conference presented new information to help understand their limitations.
2. Providence Preservation Society: Henry noted that Jack Gold's cohort in Providence is drawing fire from the local press because of their advocacy for preserving buildings from the second half of the 20th century. DOCOMOMO_US/New England has written to Jack suggesting that the organizations might gain from combined efforts. David Hart attended the recent Providence Preservation Society house tour and was especially interested to learn that most of Benefit Street had been a flourishing low-income neighborhood when the buildings were slated for removal. He observed that today these homes have granite countertops and French doors, but the neighborhood may have lost some of its lively residential identity.
Speaking of modern kitchens, Susan Schur directed our attention to a show of contemporary prefabricated homes at the Walker Art Museum. […meanwhile, dwell magazine is now ¾" thick and packed with stimulating reconfigurations of Modernist fantasies about good ways to live. The June issue includes four "renovations"-the most striking of which is a dramatic rebuild of everything behind an 85 year old Shopfront House in Singapore. The same issue contains a tour guide to Long Island prefab homes, including the Leisurama community in Montauk, a collection of 200 prefab summer houses built in the early 1960s and sold at Macy's. Leisurama homes were designed by Raymond Lowey-William Snaith, Inc. The tour plan is part of an advertisement for Saturn Sky roadsters.]
3. Franklin Park Colonnade: At the time when it was built (1837-1847), Boston's Custom House may have been one of the most expensive buildings in the country. Its central rotunda contained carved marble columns and capitals of unrivaled quality and architectural detail. When the building was enlarged 1913-15, a tower was built through the middle of the structure (Peabody & Stearns); some of the beautiful columns of the now vanished rotunda, designed for interior use, were saved, but sent outdoors, to Franklin Park, where they were installed in a columned entry. Ivan Myjer, Sara Chase, and the Boston Landmarks Commission have studied this deteriorating colonnade for years. They conclude that the stone is too far gone to save, too intricately undercut to replicate with cast components, and too dangerous - from stones breaking off and falling - to leave in place. The column capitals are vast-five feet in diameter, six feet tall, say 3 ½ tons each. The Boston Globe ran an article suggesting that the City administration had not maintained the colonnade, reflecting its racist leanings. Putting questions of alleged racism aside, Ivan points out that there is no feasible way to maintain sugared marble so friable that 5 lb. pieces come away in your hand. Historic New England is ready to accept whatever is intact, but it cannot stay outdoors. Olmsted, we expect, would not be happy with this formal gateway stranded in his landscape. The Franklin Park Zoo has received $500,000 to apply towards preservation. Demolition and salvage would cost $350,000. Ivan asked, "Is this a good application of public funds?"
4. Preservation Potluck: One of the pleasures of Matthew Bronski's call for entries to our digital potluck presentations is that it entices friends who live too far away to come to our meetings (in spite of our leisurely start time of 8:00 a.m.) to send information on their projects. This month, more than half the projects were outside of Boston-from places as physically distant as Liverpool and psychically distant as Amesbury.
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Amy Cole Ives sent pictures of mortar samples from the Cushman House in Maine. The exterior of the sample was beige while the interior was charcoal gray. Her observation was that over time, carbonation can change the color of Portland cement to beige. |
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Beth Nathan sent photos of an unreinforced early 20th century masonry tower at St. Mary's Church that was built from structural tile block back-up with a brick facing - no structural frame or internal reinforcing! Beth also sent pictures of an unusual decorative tan and black brick used in the hollow corner towers of Thompson Hall at the University of New Hampshire. Bill Mack had worked on this project when he was at Shawmut and described their smeared checkerboard pattern as resembling Harlequin ice cream (sans strawberry). |
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Margo Jones sent images of a contractor's clever means and methods used to replace the rotted base of wood columns on a Greek Revival church. Rather than shoring the portico up at the lintel, the contractor used bolted-clasp tension rings around each column to jack them a foot from the bottom, while leaving the bottom completely clear for the work to proceed. |
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David Hart showed Bronson Alcott's School of Philosophy in Concord to illustrate the durability of unpainted wood dating from late 19th century (1879?) board and batten construction. John Wathne matches the wood to #6 Eastern Hemlock. It shows nothing like the UV degradation technical literature would lead us to expect. For over 100 years, the wood was simply untreated and uncoated. In 1978, a Hydrozo natural wax was applied to the building (today, silanes might be promoted for this use) but the Hydrozo has long since worn away. David made the point that untreated wood can prove extremely durable: while it readily absorbs water, it also dries rapidly (easy in, easy out). [Jan Lawandowski, timber framer, has argued that as long as wood is never painted, its resistance can be surprising high. Once painted and left to deteriorate, its rate of decay accelerates. The typically unpainted medieval timber buildings in northern Europe support Jan's argument. The School of Philosophy was never painted.] |
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Jonathan Smith brought the Woods Hole Dome, a current preoccupation of DOCOMOMO_US/New England and the Cape Cod Historical Commission. Gunnar Pederson was the Modernist architect for the Nautilus Motor Inn, which will be demolished and replaced by high-end elderly housing. The restaurant for Pederson's motel was in a geodesic dome, designed by students in a studio taught by Buckminster Fuller at MIT. They also fabricated the parts and built it, and several key figures are alive today. While constructing the dome, they put a parachute over the uppermost part and slept inside. This is now the oldest extant Fuller dome. In 1953, the Mylar skin was wrecked by Hurricane Carol, but this enclosure had always been problematic because of glare and heat gain. After this damage, a fiberglass skin was installed, and though unsightly, it is still in place. Simpson Gumpertz and Heger has produced a condition assessment for the developer, who proposes to keep the dome as a sculptural framework in its original location. There are questions about how well its ferrous connectors will last if exposed to the elements. |
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Roberto Rosa showed Serpentino's restoration of a LaFarge window at Trinity Church. The original glass has suffered from crizzling- a kind of sugaring deterioration of the glass resulting from either too much alkali or too little lime in its composition. Some of the LaFarge glass will deteriorate even if stabilized with new topical treatments. Serpentino used locally-made glass that replicates the texture, tone, and hue of the original. Other parts of the window were restored. Once thought to admit too much light, the window was shaded with a black wash. Serpentino brought the window back from the dead with a thorough cleaning using warm water. |
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Regan Shields showed a window challenge arising from the introduction of residences into a historic South End bank. The tall original windows have thin profiles, but they are inoperable. The program calls for adding operable windows to the residences. Regan is working with Jim Kfoury of J K Glass to create an operable awning that will look convincing. Susan Schur suggested that an operable transom might be the least anomalous outcome. |
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Taya Dixon showed us the Walker Autobody Factory in Amesbury to illustrate the problem of conserving antique commercial signs that were painted directly onto brickwork. She asked, "What will be left to appreciate after brick repairs and repointing?" There is no National Park Service requirement (or guideline). [While the gradual fading of these old signs physically alludes to the phrase "timeworn," different circumstances may mean that the treatment of each should be different. There is a good example of one that has been freshly repainted in Cambridge on the "Squirrel Products" factory, while some in the downtown Lowell Historic district were allowed to remain as fading palimpsests] |
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Sara Wermiel brought images from streets lined with late-18th and 19th-century warehouses in Liverpool. These tall structures have several signature features, notably a vertical array of loading doors recessed in the center with a pent roof covering a pulley, and an asymmetrical stack of circular windows illuminating a staircase. The tier of loading doors and pulleys are found on 19th c. American warehouses too, such as the one that is now the Boston Childrens' Museum. Sara showed a new structure (built for housing) with massing similar to the warehouses, located in a warehouse district in Liverpool. In addition to its massing, the new block incorporated a slightly recessed central panel and circular windows. Henry stammered that this again illustrated the craven use of idiosyncratic local massing and a few debased quotations from authentic structures nearby to avoid making a truly compatible building with authenticity of its own. |
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Matthew Bronski brought images and fragments of a 1914 continuous window-wall system that formed the front in all six stories of the former Summerfield furniture building in down city Providence. The storefront assemblies spanned column-to-column and floor-to-ceiling. The windows, with openings as large as 12' x 15' and 15' x 30', were carried in an original system of copper-clad wood reinforced with steel. Some lites were rolled metal sash operable on vertical central pivots (pity the poor bushing). Over time, the wood split, connections gave, and some 8' x 8' sheets of glass fell into the street. Simpson Gumpertz and Heger developed an aesthetically similar but technically sound replacement system of copper-clad wood perimeter framing and rolled steel sash that acknowledged the dimensional imperative set by the building's large openings, and allowed for deflection of the spandrel beams. |
5. Prospects for H. H. Richardson's House brighten then dim: David Kelman reported on the difficulties inherent in the HHR property in Brookline. The property's value is high because of its wonderful location, but restoration costs will be high as well. Figures like $2.5M sale price + $2.5M restoration cost floated through the Architects Building. Dr. Fred Hoppin, now the sole owner of the Richardson House, plans to sell it with preservation restrictions that would protect some historic portions of the exterior and interior. But the carrying costs are astronomical. Gary Wolf had attended a recent open house and witnessed the effects of roof leaks through those portions of the house most insistently reflecting Richardson's presence. The worst damage may be in the most sacrosanct chamber, the great man's cork-lined bedroom. It might be less expensive to track down Proust's home for another cork-lined bedroom. Gary urged David to recommend emergency repairs to protect the house from further ruin from the New Weather. Contact David Kelman or Fred Hoppin [(617) 734-8175 or fhoppin@rcn.com] or Allan Galper [ASGalper@sherin.com] for information.
8: 00 a.m., Thursday, 13 July 2006
The Architects' Building, 52 Broad Street, Boston, fifth floor
Featuring Wayne Towle
"Refinishing Techniques for Historic Architectural Woodwork"
PLEASE NOTE
There will be no August meeting of this Committee
Henry Moss, Matthew Bronski, and Sara Wermiel co-leaders and scribes