Restoration of the Minnesota State Capitol Building
by Peter J. Marcucci
Photos Courtesy Mark 1 Restoration and Bonstone Materials Corporation
(Hover over photos for captions)
Since the turn of the twentieth century, the Minnesota State Capitol building in St. Paul has stood as a proud symbol of its statehood and its people. Designed by leading Architect Cass Gilbert, construction of the Minnesota State Capitol broke ground in 1896, with the first cornerstone being laid by Minnesota’s second Governor, Alexander Ramsey, on July 27, 1898.
Originally costing 4.5 million dollars, the solid marble structure was modeled after St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Italy.
It formally opened for politics in 1905.
Although standing resilient through a century’s worth of weather and pollution, the solid marble structure began showing its age with crumbling elements, fading details and leaking appendages years prior to its repairs beginning in 2013.
One of many companies bidding in hopes of restoring the building at that time was Mark 1 Restoration in Dolton, Illinois.
Mark 1 Restoration has been doing business in the Midwest for over twenty years, employing as many as two hundred fifty personnel during peak construction season.
The company does approximately 30 million dollars in restoration annually in a market that is seemingly endless.
“We started this project in fall of 2012 by doing a mockup,” said Scott Evett, Vice President of Mark 1 Restoration.
“Actually, three bidders bid on the project, just to do the mockup. It was a large section of the building as opposed to just a small area. We finished it in late 2012.”
The state liked the timely manner and final results of their work. As a result, Mark 1 Restoration and the State of Minnesota soon entered into a contract, and by spring of 2013, phase-one of the project began.
As far as state capitol buildings go, this one is probably on the side of larger explained Evett, noting that it is very similar in appearance to the United States Capitol.
“The building is four stories tall. As far as the perimeter of the building, you’re looking at about a thousand lineal feet. The vertical height on the main part of the building is approximately ninety feet high, with the dome height being almost double that at one hundred eighty feet. Just erecting the scaffolding is a major project. To give you an idea, it took in excess of fourteen semi-truck loads of scaffolding just to launch this project, and a couple of months to erect it. Now, of course, we’ve been able to work year-round by putting an enclosure around it and heating it. It was part of our plan to provide heat for the work area and to protect our men. Our guys, when the outdoor temperature is cold, are working in temperatures that are in the fifty-degree range inside the work area—so we’ve been working all year long. We have a very demanding schedule, and we’ve needed to keep moving.”
Mark 1 Restoration specializes in masonry restoration—period, which means they work with brick, stone, terracotta and masonry. The stone might be anything from marble to granite, and masonry might be bricks, blocks and terracotta. According to Evett, the company specializes in all of the repairs associated with those elements, including tuck-pointing, cleaning, patching and sealing. They are also masters at complete replacement or repair of structural angles, lintels and structural beams. Anything that has to do with the actual building facade relevant to the masonry that is on it, Mark 1 Restoration will do it. At the time of this writing, Mark 1 Restoration has just completed phase-one of the four-phase project—phase-one being the northeast quadrant of the building.
“What we’ve done so far is the cleaning, removal, replacement, and redressing of the marble. The redressing is such that we’ve lightly ground smooth the areas of the stone that have deterioration on the surface. This deterioration occurs as the matrix of the stone breaks down from the outdoor elements and takes on a sugary appearance and feel. We try to gently remove that sugar to regain the original solid surface underneath. If you don’t do this, moisture continues to get into the sugary area and doesn’t evaporate. You then get an organic growth within the marble that breaks down the stone even more, thereby accelerating the deterioration. So by redressing the marble, you can gain more years of service life out of the stone. We are also doing sealant removal and replacement, tuck-pointing, and patching, but the main thing we are doing is the removal and replacement of stone using Dutchman technique.
“Most people think of a Dutchman repair as a small square patch on the face of the stone. In our case, it could be as small as a twenty pound stone or as big as a five hundred pound stone, but because the existing marble is so thick, it is not cost affective to remove the whole stone. So what we do is go in and chisel out a portion of the bad area of the stone. We then make a piece that fits perfectly. That piece then gets placed into the area that we’ve prepared. Sometimes this is technically difficult, because the openings that we’ve created for these Dutchman repairs have to be perfectly square. Many of the techniques and capabilities of our men must be similar to those that a hand carver would need. We use small electric hammers that are very precise, and when you’re all done chipping and preparing for the new stone to be installed, the opening that you have looks like a square box on the inside. We have very exact tolerances by which those two stones have to match. The new piece is then glued in using stainless steel dowels for strength. The new stone will have a difference of appearance, but that is understood. In a couple of years it will blend in, and they are willing to accept that. They don’t want us to treat [i.e. age] the stone because, in the long run, they don’t think that will make a difference. So if it takes a few years for the stone to age, they are willing to wait.”
According to Evett, 95 percent of the Minnesota State Capitol was built using White Georgia Marble, and according to the records, it was quarried in what we now know as Pickens County, Georgia. The quarry, owned at the time by the Amicalola Power and Marble Company, was quarried by the Butler-Ryan Company in 1897. These primitively cut blocks were shipped by railroad (owned at the time by the Georgia Marble Company) to the cutting mills in Ball Ground, Georgia, where, for the most part, were cut to size and machined. Upon arriving at the jobsite in St. Paul, necessary supplemental carving and general hand finishing by masons and artisans were also performed. That quarry is now owned by a Canadian company, explained Evett, noting that like all restoration projects, the restoration engineers and architects have tried to maintain the exact design that was there previously.
“We’ve employed painstaking steps to measure and fabricate the stone, so that when it’s replaced it’s the same profile and shape that it was originally. We are also using the same marble from the original quarry in Georgia. It is now owned by Polycor Inc. of Canada, and it is rather small compared to Polycor’s main quarries. It had been shut down for many years, and in order to cut blocks for this project, the entire quarry had to be de-watered. Prior to our arrival, Polycor was given an estimate of what was going to be needed, and those blocks were cut before we even had a contract. I’m thinking that this total restoration will require in excess of twenty thousand cubic feet of raw blocks, and they are going to have to go back and quarry more.”
While doing the demo work, Mark 1 Restoration’s field technicians found previous repairs that had been performed in past years but were done piecemeal. “That’s typical of any of the old buildings we work on,” Evett said, explaining that older stone buildings start to deteriorate little by little and not necessarily on a large scale.
“A little deterioration occurs there, and a little bit of work is done here, but, eventually, as time goes by, the deterioration starts on a larger scale. Everybody wants to avoid a larger cost of repairs, and they know how to do it: Do The Work Now,” Evett explained. “There is a multiplying factor, and the longer you wait, the longer the masonry has to sit and be soaked in water, and by this time it has gotten into the coping stone joints and into the backup masonry. Now you have freeze and thaw and rusting of the attachments. So the longer you wait has an accelerating effect on the materials, and the sooner the repairs begin, the better. I think savvy owners know this, and over time they have figured out that exterior restoration is an important budget item for them. I don’t think there is a stone or existing profile at this site that won’t be replaced or repaired, with some areas having more stone replaced than others. There is a lot of ornate scroll work, column capitals and pilaster capitals that have volutes as well as abacuses with leaves that will require lots of hand carving. Many columns and balustrades too. They are also changing from an ashlar flat profile of stone to more of a lower profile which consists of drip edges, rolled edges, cornices and window surrounds.”
Mark 1 Restoration is considered a large contractor, but that doesn’t mean they don’t do small projects as well. They are, however, strictly an installation contractor and not a fabricator and have been using Twin City Tile and Marble in St. Paul, Minnesota for most field measuring and shop drawing work. Those measurements and drawings are then handed off to numerous stone fabricators around the country. In this case there are many fabricators being used because, according to Evett, just one fabricator cannot keep up with the amount of work that this project requires. None are local he said, but there are other prominent players involved that he did mention.
“We are the contractor doing the work, but the general contractor and construction manager is JE Dunn Construction, based in Kansas City, Missouri. Additionally, Hammel, Green, and Abrahamson, Executive Architects, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota are also on-site as well as Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc., Restoration Architects and Engineers from Northbrook, Illinois. Also, Bonstone Materials Corporation of Mukwonago, Wisconsin is the maker of the epoxy that we use to bond new stone to the existing. We have a long track record with Bonstone, and the architects have also specified the use of their products. If the repair is going to last, it is because of the ability of the epoxy to last over time. We find that their products have always been of high quality.”
Slated for completion by winter of 2016, the next phase (phase-two) will be the northwest quadrant. Phase-three will be the entire south elevation, which is actually the front of the capitol. Phase-four will then be the rotunda (dome). Phase approval is an ongoing process as each of the four-phases receives separate approvals and spending.
“When this project is complete and our scaffolding comes down, I’m sure that everyone involved will feel that this building will be able to endure. It is expected that these repairs will last fifty years or more. These repairs will have taken into account the historical nature of the building by matching the design and character of the existing details, and the quality of this work will be such that it will make all those who have worked on the Minnesota State Capitol restoration project proud to have their names associated with that work that was completed. I’ve been very fortunate as a manager to work with such great field people. They are all very bright, and it has been easy to work with them because of their skill and because of how much they enjoy what they are doing. I am very blessed in that manner. We all have tough jobs, and it always becomes tougher with the people we work with if they’re not all in.”
For more information about construction of the capitol as well as a link to other resources visit:whobuiltourcapitol.advantagelabs.com/time-line-quarrying-activities-amicolola-quarry
For more information about Mark 1 Restoration, visit: www.mark1masonry.com
For more information about Bonstone Materials Corporation, visit: www.bonstone.com