Seldom Seen Craft 7/30/22

In central PA, Gray stone was a building material used for major buildings that were intended to last and to project an image of importance, strength, and security. It was used to build court houses, post offices, banks, churches, etc. Old Main, the President’s House and a number of other early buildings on the Penn State University Park Campus were made of gray stone.

With the development of more cost effective, low maintenance, and energy efficient building materials, today gray stone is more a decorative material in the construction of buildings. Still, many retaining and decorative walls on campus are made of gray stone.

Over last spring, summer and fall, and this spring and summer as I biked through campus, I noticed the same three-man crew of masons from the Office of Physical Plant reconstructing gray stone retaining and decorative walls. Last week I stopped to photograph them at work on a retaining wall that runs between a campus street and dorm separated by about 4 foot in elevation.

The process the masons appear to follow as they work section by section is to number the gray stone blocks as they deconstruct the wall and clean the stones, pour a new footing where needed, and then reconstruct the wall replacing the original stones back in order adding new stones as needed. Mortar is mixed on sight and the joints finished using what is known as a “beaded masonry joint” that protrudes and has almost square edges.

The top photo and the next two photos below show other campus gray stone walls rebuilt or repaired within the last year by this crew of masons.