punctuated
buildings with flaccid monotony. Owners also lopped off stoops, abandoning the original entryways like forgotten lovers.
South Portland Avenue in Brooklyn.
To stave off erosion of the stone, brownstoners, as the new immigrants dubbed and still dub themselves, also painted brownstone
facades. In a second mistake from the 1960s, many brownstoners used nonbreathable paint, which trapped moisture and exacerbated
stone spalling. Other brownstoners patched the weakened stone with stucco. Often, however, they failed to match the colors
of stucco and stone, leaving the building looking like a teenager’s blotchy face. With more experience and money, later owners
began to stucco the entire building, and it is these more modern restorations that rankle brownstone purists.
“We recently restored a five-story building and spent seventy-five thousand dollars, which was a good price. We could have
paid much less or much, much more. It took two to four guys working full time four months to complete it,” said Barrett. First,
restorers jackhammered off the old stucco to get down to the original stone. They then applied a gray cement mortar mixed
with coarse aggregate to form a base, or scratch coat. Barrett’s restorers hand molded all of the scroll work around the new
windows using simple trowels. They rebuilt the steps by hand with stucco. On the finish stucco coat, they applied an aggregate-free
cement mortar with a custom-created mix of colored sand.
The artistry of a high-quality restoration such as the one on Barrett’s row house bestows a dignity that harkens back to the
glory days of the brownstone, when owning one meant that a person had achieved a certain level in society. The fancy detailing
around the windows and doors gives the building elegance, style, and depth. Barrett’s attention to detail results from his
interests and concerns about history and the importance of brownstone to the development of New York. But I miss the imperfections
of true brownstone. Most restorers, at least the high-end ones, do such a good job that the buildings lack character. The
lines are too straight, the stucco too homogenous, the color too even. While stucco restoration corrects the fatal flaws of
the past, the buildings lose their soul. The great row houses of modern Brooklyn are no longer brownstones but “brownstuccos.”
They could fit right in in Santa Fe, stucco capital of the world.
What I like best about brownstone is its geologic essence. When you look closely, you can see that the individual sand grains
vary in size from mote to pebble, and in color from reddish to deep mocha. Some bedding planes are thick, some are wavy, and
some are not visible because the builder placed the stone with the bedding plane face out, which tends to make the blocks
look like wood grain. The erosion differs, depending on resistance and aspect. I found one building with a pair of dragon
faces carved out of brownstone below the front porch. One retained its detail while the other had worn away to a ghost of
its original fierceness. This heterogeneity reflects the original, complex depositional environment of the stone 200 million
years ago.
Most people do not encounter geologic phenomena on a daily basis. You may read about distant volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis
in the news but with brownstone you can see the same processes that wore down the Appalachian Mountains and carved the Grand
Canyon. You can see how water and ice infiltrate and ferret out the weakest links in a rock and slowly reduce it to its constituent
grains. A solid in geologic time is not truly a solid, and it will surrender to an overriding principle of nature—gravity;
what goes up must come down, even if it takes millions of years or in the case of the hapless brownstones, decades.
The basic geologic story of brownstone is simple and appealing. Go back 200 million years. Streams wash into a valley and
buildings with flaccid monotony. Owners also lopped off stoops, abandoning the original entryways like forgotten lovers.
South Portland Avenue in Brooklyn.
To stave off erosion of the stone, brownstoners, as the new immigrants dubbed and still dub themselves, also painted brownstone
facades. In a second mistake from the 1960s, many brownstoners used nonbreathable paint, which trapped moisture and exacerbated
stone spalling. Other brownstoners patched the weakened stone with stucco. Often, however, they failed to match the colors
of stucco and stone, leaving the building looking like a teenager’s blotchy face. With more experience and money, later owners
began to stucco the entire building, and it is these more modern restorations that rankle brownstone purists.
“We recently restored a five-story building and spent seventy-five thousand dollars, which was a good price. We could have
paid much less or much, much more. It took two to four guys working full time four months to complete it,” said Barrett. First,
restorers jackhammered off the old stucco to get down to the original stone. They then applied a gray cement mortar mixed
with coarse aggregate to form a base, or scratch coat. Barrett’s restorers hand molded all of the scroll work around the new
windows using simple trowels. They rebuilt the steps by hand with stucco. On the finish stucco coat, they applied an aggregate-free
cement mortar with a custom-created mix of colored sand.
The artistry of a high-quality restoration such as the one on Barrett’s row house bestows a dignity that harkens back to the
glory days of the brownstone, when owning one meant that a person had achieved a certain level in society. The fancy detailing
around the windows and doors gives the building elegance, style, and depth. Barrett’s attention to detail results from his
interests and concerns about history and the importance of brownstone to the development of New York. But I miss the imperfections
of true brownstone. Most restorers, at least the high-end ones, do such a good job that the buildings lack character. The
lines are too straight, the stucco too homogenous, the color too even. While stucco restoration corrects the fatal flaws of
the past, the buildings lose their soul. The great row houses of modern Brooklyn are no longer brownstones but “brownstuccos.”
They could fit right in in Santa Fe, stucco capital of the world.
What I like best about brownstone is its geologic essence. When you look closely, you can see that the individual sand grains
vary in size from mote to pebble, and in color from reddish to deep mocha. Some bedding planes are thick, some are wavy, and
some are not visible because the builder placed the stone with the bedding plane face out, which tends to make the blocks
look like wood grain. The erosion differs, depending on resistance and aspect. I found one building with a pair of dragon
faces carved out of brownstone below the front porch. One retained its detail while the other had worn away to a ghost of
its original fierceness. This heterogeneity reflects the original, complex depositional environment of the stone 200 million
years ago.
Most people do not encounter geologic phenomena on a daily basis. You may read about distant volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis
in the news but with brownstone you can see the same processes that wore down the Appalachian Mountains and carved the Grand
Canyon. You can see how water and ice infiltrate and ferret out the weakest links in a rock and slowly reduce it to its constituent
grains. A solid in geologic time is not truly a solid, and it will surrender to an overriding principle of nature—gravity;
what goes up must come down, even if it takes millions of years or in the case of the hapless brownstones, decades.
The basic geologic story of brownstone is simple and appealing. Go back 200 million years. Streams wash into a valley and
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