Local 1 PA/DE’s Artful Restoration

Local 1 members Thomas Quinn, foreground, and Dan Amon point stone at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, which sits in a prominent location overlooking the Schuylkill River with City Hall to its west, has long been considered one of America’s most beautiful buildings despite its worn and weathered exterior. Thanks to the superb craftsmanship of Local 1 Pennsylvania/Delaware members, the Museum will be fully restored to its former luster very soon.

In December 2006, when BAC members arrived on the site, it was clear the building, which was constructed in the 1920s, was in dire need of an overhaul. Age and a leaky roof were the main causes of the damage. The gutter system had not been replaced since the Eisenhower Administration, the terra cotta’s brilliant colors had faded, and the limestone was crumbling.

At a total cost of $31 million, the project’s major goals were to stop water from infiltrating the building’s exterior envelope and repair damage to the building due to weather and age. Members working for Lepore/Mark, a joint venture between Dan Lepore and Sons Co. of Conshohocken, PA and Mark Masonry Co. of Pennsauken, NJ, are performing a complete repointing of the structure using more than 250,000 linear feet of mortar joints. They are also cleaning the limestone façade, replacing and patching dolomite stone quarried in Minnesota – a task that has not been done in over 30 years, replacing brick and terra cotta, and patching terra cotta using lasers and dry ice.

Local 1 member Joseph Blanche.	Local 1 members Robert Dietrich, foreground, and Robert Burkhardt point terra cotta.

Local 1 PA/DE members working on the project are Superintendent and 25-year member Gino Varacalli, Foreman and 10-year member John Murphy, and members Joe Blanche, Matt Satmary, Dan Amon, Rob Sylvester, Anthony Shultz, Tom Quinn, John Quatrochi, Bob Lucchesi, Jason Burnitskie, Michael Chambers, Patrick Quinn, Matthew Corcoran, Robert Burkhardt, Robert Dietrich, William Roeder, Justin Kula, Joseph Quinn, Richard Buecheler, William Laranko and Nick Demtshuk.

Local 1 member John Quatrochi performs concrete repair.

The Museum also recently completed a $90 million expansion with the construction of the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building. Local 1 members working for Lepore/Mark, worked on this expansion, as well as on another high-profile project for the city, the Phildelphia City Hall. Due to the importance and visibility of these projects, all members had to demonstrate their skills before work began. Thanks to their high quality workmanship, both projects are on schedule.

The Museum’s current restoration is scheduled for completion in 2009, but there will still be more work in the future. Only one of the Museum’s eight pediments was finished when the Museum was built. In 1992, a donor left a little more than one million dollars to the Museum with the stipulation that it be used to “add the sculptures in any or all of the uncompleted pediments around the Philadelphia Museum of Art.” So sometime in the future, BAC members will once again be given the opportunity to work on this important and historic structure.