Preservation Brief 42: The Maintenance, Repair and Replacement of Historic Cast Stone
Pieper R. 2001. Preservation Brief 42: The Maintenance, Repair and Replacement of Historic Cast Stone. Cultural Landscape Guidance Documents. ISSN: 0885-7016. National Park Service, Technical Preservation Services. Washington, D.C.
A guidance brief on the maintenance, repair, and replacement of historic cast stone. Cast stone, or precast concrete building units, is one example of how cheaper and more common materials have been used on building exteriors to imitate more expensive natural materials. Cast stone is a name given to various concrete mixtures that uses molded shapes, decorative aggregates, and masonry pigments to simulate natural stone. It is comprised of a mixture of water, sand, coarse aggregate, and cementing agents and held together by one of several binding agents. These variations in composition, manufacture, and finishing are reflected in differences in the resulting products. After gaining popularity in the United States in the 1860s, cast stone became widely acceptable as an economical substitute for natural stone by the early decades of the 20th century. Now, it is considered a significant historic material in its own right, with particular deterioration problems that require both traditional and innovative responses. This Brief discusses the maintenance and repair of historic cast stone. It addresses the conditions that warrant replacement of historic cast stone with contemporary products and guidance on their replication. Many of the considerations and techniques discussed here are relevant to the replacement of other precast concrete products, as well.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Pieper, Richard
- Date of Issue
- 2001-09
- Publisher
- National Park Service, Technical Preservation Services
- Units
- CRPS
- Keywords
- Aggregate, Artificial Stone, Building substitute, Coade Stone, Coignet Stone, Concrete Mixture, Concrete Stone, CRSS, deterioration, Dry Tamp, Frear Stone, Historic building material, Imitation, Precast, Reinforced concrete, Stone Cleaning, Wet cast