Through plaster, stone and wood, craftsmen restore history
Renovating historic properties presents myriad challenges from recreating intricate and disintegrating plaster details to matching century-old stonework to simply operating safely in buildings designed for different structural loads. Winners of the 2025 Craftsmanship Awards showed how to create stunning results in historic — and sometimes highly prominent — properties.
Daughters of the American Revolution, Memorial Continental Hall
The prominent Washington, D.C. property of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Memorial Continental Hall had not been renovated in decades.
So, masons, plasterers, painters and other craftspeople at Worcester Eisenbrandt faced a big scope of work and some intricate challenges when they began a sweeping restoration project.
The stone building had developed heavy, black staining at the parapet, much of the mortar was far past its lifespan and the marble required extensive cleaning, repointing and repair. Multiple types of marble had previously been used to replace balusters and other deteriorating items. The Worcester Eisenbrandt team, however, contacted quarries that supplied the hall’s original stone, obtained replacement pieces and carefully positioned them to match surrounding textures, colors and veining.
Inside the hall, plasterers removed all damaged plaster throughout three floors of public spaces (taking some walls down to the substrate) and employed traditional methods to recreate perfectly smooth surfaces.
To recreate the hall’s historic color palette, conservators extracted samples of the original paint, analyzed it under a microscope and began the painstaking process of covering walls, ceilings, crown moldings, floral moldings, chair rails, brackets, dentils and other fine details in the cool white, warm cream and gold leaf.
The intricacy of the interiors required crews to roller or hand paint every surface, and sometimes with very tiny brushes.
“There’s a lot of very intricate, sculpted details in the hall,” said Amy Hollis, Conservator and Project Manager at Worcester Eisenbrandt. “In one room, there is a cornice with brackets and there’s a flower at the bottom of each bracket plus some sculpted elements and a little beaded detail. I had to get artist’s brushes for our painters to do those tiny details, and I’m pretty sure they spent a lot of time holding their breath as they painted.”
A final challenge for the project team was replicating the building’s original main doors, which had been replaced half a century ago.
Fortunately, the archives at DAR “still have a lot of the original drawings and we were able to find really good details of the molding profile,” Hollis said. “We even had handwritten notes from the original architects about the hardware.”
The project team fabricated new doors – which featured quartersawn oak leaves, bronze hardware and glazing stops – then meticulously installed 200-pound doors in the stone building. Every bronze screw was aligned in the same direction and the door closing speed was adjusted to a precise requirement.
Naval Academy Rotunda and Memorial Hall
Renovation of the historic Bancroft Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy presented Scaffold Resource with a unique challenge.
Craftsmen would need to access all surfaces of the lofty, domed, ornate spaces within the building’s Rotunda and Memorial Hall. Scaffolding would have to not only provide that access, but protect elaborate plaster and stonework, and function within strict weight limitations. A tunnel system running below Bancroft Hall limited the scaffolds allowable leg loads to 100 pounds per square foot on the floor.
The team from Scaffold Resource developed a plan to build two dance floor platforms, totaling 16,000 square feet.
“Each platform was installed at 22 feet high and included rolling scaffolds varying in height to allow proper access to the low and high areas within the concaved shaped ceiling,” said Steve Quaerna, Vice President of Business Development and Event Infrastructure. “These rolling scaffolds eliminated the need to have the dance floor built in multiple tiers where it would have been shaped like a wedding cake.”
The team installed a custom grillage system using four-by-four lumber and steel beams to distribute the load evenly, and engineered custom casters for the installation’s eight rolling towers to eliminate point-load concerns.
While rolling towers typically have a single caster on each leg, these towers each had “four casters set 14 inches on center attached to each leg to distribute load,” said Rolando Pohl, Project Manager.
To protect the hall’s irreplaceable stone statues and ornate architectural finishes, the team constructed custom, plywood barriers to shield those features from debris, tools and human contact throughout the renovation project.
St. John’s College, Campbell Hall
At St. John’s College in Annapolis, the team from Centerline Construction helped execute an exquisite renovation of the “beating heart” of the historic college – its bookstore, coffee shop and seating area.
The design included renovation of several unique ceilings, including a multi-layered coffered ceiling and a curved ceiling.
“It integrated multiple finish types to achieve the intended design outcome,” said Kazibi Gildenhuys, Project Manager and Vice President at Centerline. The design also “aligned different coves and arched doorways that intersect at unusual or different angles.”
To further complicate the team’s work, existing ceiling heights were significantly lower than design documents estimated. That created a major challenge in achieving required ceiling heights in the rooms while also providing sufficient space for MEP equipment and acoustical materials.
In response, the Centerline team created a framing design and coordinated with other contractors to secure ample MEP pathways. They then lead field coordination with the project’s millwork and acoustical contractors to ensure every element of the complex ceilings would meet design specifications.
