Historic Buildings often go through great trials and tribulations in their life. Many get lost by the wayside, demoed to progress their beauty and secrets lost forever. The Burgman Building has certainly been a treasure to us, having spent years saving many "lost cause" buildings from demo. The completeness of the building and most importantly its decorative frescoes are a source of enjoyment as we proceed with the buildings restoration and conservation.
With any building there are always some missing things and such is the case with our building. We have remarkable window cornices but one was missing both its zinc rosettes and another one was missing one. These are not the sort of thing you just find on Ebay or go to your local hardware store and replace. In fact I had resigned myself to probably having to cast duplicates which is a long process.
We made the acquaintance of the man who supervised the façade restoration on the building back in the 1990's last week and we recent spent an afternoon with him getting as much history as we could from him. He is 73 and winding down a bit. He mentioned somewhere in all his stuff, was some pieces to our building, Well today he rang the doorbell and in his hand was box with three zinc Rosette's. One original and two reproductions .
 |
| You just can't get these at a hardware store |
The box was from the WF Norman CO of Nevada MO and the postmark on the box was Aug 3, 1993!
 |
| The original on the right in this photo |
One of the rosette's had been taken off and shipped out to be duplicated or matched, It had been sent back but in eth confusion of restoration these missing pieces got misplaced and were never installed.
And now that original Rosettes and his two duplicates are back home 22 yrs.' and 7 days later Reunited with the Burgman Building. The gods of preservation are looking out for this building!
With any building there are always some missing things and such is the case with our building. We have remarkable window cornices but one was missing both its zinc rosettes and another one was missing one. These are not the sort of thing you just find on Ebay or go to your local hardware store and replace. In fact I had resigned myself to probably having to cast duplicates which is a long process.
We made the acquaintance of the man who supervised the façade restoration on the building back in the 1990's last week and we recent spent an afternoon with him getting as much history as we could from him. He is 73 and winding down a bit. He mentioned somewhere in all his stuff, was some pieces to our building, Well today he rang the doorbell and in his hand was box with three zinc Rosette's. One original and two reproductions .
And now that original Rosettes and his two duplicates are back home 22 yrs.' and 7 days later Reunited with the Burgman Building. The gods of preservation are looking out for this building!
1 comment:
What a wonderful find!!
Post a Comment