If and when the Union Pier is expanded as an expansion of the historic Charleston, one of the most popular and photographed characteristics will with quite a certain certainty be the historical piece that is already there: a brick ruin that is everything that remains of a rice mill from the 1830s.
Ruin comes from the water front era before the Union Pier got its current name when the location was actually an expansion of the historic Charleston, not a huge, industrial vastness that was built for the shipping needs of the 20th century.
After decades of neglect, which was only interrupted by a few spot repairs, the Bennett Rice Mill facade has now had a much more promising and stable future than maybe at all times since the Hurricane Gracie had blown out the rest of the building in 1959.
Last year, the state ports authority gel engineering ceased to make a detailed assessment of the ruin, which soon led to a contract for the 1.6 million dollar contract with Landmark Preservation LLC from Savannah and Gel to remedy it. This included the construction of temporary metal information, the existence of historical bricks that were stored on the site, repairing and partially reconstructing a lack of masonry and exchanging wood elements in the windows and doors.
The problems of the structure came more than over time, but also from some previous repairs in which bricks and mortar were used that were not involved in the original. In the large picture, temporary corrections would no longer work; It took a complete restoration to continue.
A lot was done almost a year later, but for many people it is difficult to appreciate it because the ruin remains beyond a closed goal and most of them only see it from one block or more. But a new visit to the work makes the details much clearer.
Start with the scaffold that was built. There are about ten times more than just necessary, only to grant the access of the employees to the facade. The extensive network of the scaffolding mainly acts as a bracket to arrest any movement during work. Instead of anchoring the scaffolding into the ground, it is anchored with about 40 concrete barriers.
In the meantime, more than a dozen reflectors, each of which are roughly the size of a quarter, were provided at different points on the brick to enable precise surveillance by a high-tech camera that is mounted on a removed guard house. These monitors have found minimal movements that were largely caused by temperature fluctuations, and that is a good thing when you consider how precarious were some of the openings – situations that seemed to defy both gravity and logic.
Before the repairs could start seriously, the team had to detect a source of a new brick that would correspond to the color, sizes and texture of the original. In the end, they ordered about 3,600-SICHT representatives of Old Carolina Brick Co., both from the historic Charleston Foundation and the Preservation Society of Charleston, paid a visit to the location to ensure that the new mortar mix was a suitable game.
Gregory Jacobs from Landmark Preservation notices every restoration project has its unique challenges: “And we have a knack for finding the most unique.” The collaborative approach aims to find a balance between the consolidation and not to prevent its patina from surviving for almost 200 years.
The main facade was lost decades ago, but ironic would not have been as impressive as the surviving west wall. Before the collapse of the building, architectural drawings made show that the most important facade in the north had larger brick surfaces and apparently not as much detail per square foot as the surviving piece.
John Ecker of the perception of Meilenstein says that even with several weeks of work has been lost lately due to freezer temperatures: “We have the feeling that we have turned back the corner. We are now setting up. There are no surprises at this point.”
More brick and mill work will be attributed in the next few months, and the steel beams will also be supplemented.
And as this has happened, everyone can discuss how this facade and all its surrounding property can best be involved in the historical city, so that one day will soon all of the 19th century most remarkable industrial buildings from the 19th century from the 19th century.
If we do that, those who work to save it will hope that we ask ourselves exactly what they had to do.