Hands-On Training at the Fairmount Park Conservancy in Philadelphia, PA
Founded in 1867, Fairmount Park was developed to protect Philadelphia’s public water supply and to preserve green spaces within a fast-growing industrial cityscape.
The Park has served as backdrop to many of this country’s biggest celebrations and events over the last 200 years, but it has fallen victim to the destruction and vandalism of last year’s protests.
The Fairmount Park Conservancy currently manages and maintains the park with a small group of architects and conservators. This group strives tirelessly to keep up with the demand of restoring and maintaining the park.
Kelly Altrichter, conservator with FPC, understands that using the proper materials to restore the masonry structures within the park is only half of the battle. The other half is getting the proper training and learning how to do the restoration correctly the first time.
Kelly invited Cathedral Stone Products to do a workshop at the Clifford Park Mansion, which was built by George C. Thomas and now serves as the office and workshop for the FPC. Knowing that there are several masonry restoration projects in the works for FPC, Cathedral Stone presented the proper use, installation, and performance of various cleaners, strippers, and mortars--along with a few hands-on demonstrations.
The FPC group all agreed that the hands-on portion of the workshop was by far the most fun, exciting, and, as Kelly put it:
“An all-around excellent learning experience!”
We walked everyone through installing a proper limestone patch. We also walked them through the mock-up/testing process of our Latex-Based Cleaner--for this we used their marble fireplace mantle in the main dining room.
We always welcome an opportunity to get groups hands-on with our products. Showing the possibilities of using a substrate-specific mortar with no bonding agent and how cleaning without acids is not only possible, but preferred.
Once again, many thanks to the Fairmount Park Conservancy team for inviting us out to work with them on their restoration and maintenance efforts.
If you would like to learn more about how Cathedral Stone Products can be your single source for all of your masonry restoration, preservation, and maintenance projects, feel free to message me directly on LinkedIn.
