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Cleaning, Restoration, And Maintenance Masonry Restoration
(Historic Rehabilitation)
1) General
2) Standards For Historic Rehabilitation
3) Moisture Problems in Historic Structures
4) Salvaged Brick
5) Repointing Mortar Joints
6) Cleaning And Water Repellent Coating of Historic Buildings
1. General
As cities and states complete their preservation inventories, it is possible to see how large our heritage of historic architecture has become.
We are just beginning to assess its potential as a cultural resource as well as for needed housing and office space. The size of this restoration-rehabilitation need has been presented in the report Historic Buildings: A Study of the Magnitude of Architectural Conservation Needs in America, National Institute for the Conservation for Cultural Property, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1984.
Rehabilitation work is to comprise the major part of construction activity for most of us in the late 1980s. A substantial part of that rehab work will involve historic preservation concerns and standards, an emerging discipline among architects that demands re-education and professional training. From the preservation and architectural community there exists a large resource of technical information. This preservation technology has lessons for new building as well as for restoration and rehabilitation.
2. Government Standards for Historic Rehabilitation
Government standards for historic rehabilitation comprise that portion of the overall historic preservation project addressing the most prevalent treatment today: Rehabilitation. It is defined as the process of returning a property to a state of utility, through repair or alteration, which makes possible an efficient contemporary use while preserving those portions and features of the property which are significant to its historic, architectural, and cultural values.
1. Every reasonable effort shall be made to provide a compatible use for a property which requires minimal alteration of the building, structure, or site and its environment, or to use a property for its originally intended purpose.
2. The distinguishing original qualities or character of a building, structure, or site and its environment shall not be destroyed. The removal or alteration of any historic material or distinctive architectural features should be avoided when possible.
3. All buildings, structures, and sites shall be recognized as products of their own time. Alterations that have no historical basis and which seek to create an earlier appearance shall be discouraged.
4. Changes which may have taken place in the course of time are evidence of the history and development of a building, structure, or site and its environment. These changes may have acquired significance in their own right, and this significance shall be recognized and respected.
5. Distinctive stylistic features or examples of skilled craftsmanship which characterize a building, structure, or site shall be treated with sensitivity.
6. Deteriorated architectural features shall be repaired rather than replaced, wherever possible. In the event replacement is necessary, the new material should match the material being replaced in composition, design, color, texture, and other visual qualities. Repair or replacement of missing architectural features should be based on accurate duplications of features, substantiated by historic, physical, or pictorial evidence rather than on conjectural designs or the availability of different architectural elements from other buildings or structures.
7. The surface cleaning of structures shall be undertaken with the gentlest means possible. Sandblasting and other cleaning methods that will damage the historic building materials shall not be undertaken.
8. Every reasonable effort shall be made to protect and preserve archeological resources affected by, or adjacent to any project.
9. Contemporary design for alterations and additions to existing properties shall not be discouraged when such alterations and additions do not destroy significant historical, architectural or cultural material, and such design is compatible with the size, scale, color, material, and character of the property, neighborhood or environment.
10. Wherever possible, new additions or alterations to structures shall be done in such a manner that if such additions or alterations were to be removed in the future, the essential form and integrity of the structure would be unimpaired.
2.1. The Standards are used to evaluate whether the historic character of a building is preserved in the process of rehabilitation.
As stated in the definition, the treatment "Rehabilitation" assumes that at least some repair or alteration of the historic building will need to take place in order to provide for an efficient contemporary use; however these re pairs and alterations must not damage or destroy the materials and features -- including their finishes -- that are important in defining the building's historic character.
After Restoration
Parkade Plaza Project, Spokane, Washington
Architect: Warren Cummings Heylman & Associates, Spokane
The NW Masonry Guide Table of Contents
Masonry Institute of Washington
Washington State Conference of Mason Contractors
