St. Stephen’s Church (The Church of Our Lady of the Scapular & St. Stephen), New York City (1854)
This historic church features a 22,000 square-foot rib-vaulted wood lath and plaster ceiling and fresco paintings by the renowned Constantino Brumidi. The ceiling was in a terrible state of dilapidation made worse by a previous ill-conceived and failed consolidation treatment attempt that left an impervious coat of sticky resin over the attic side of the plaster.
After a section of the ceiling collapsed, John Tiedemann Inc. and Historic Plaster Conservation Services (Canada) were called in to assess the plaster’s condition and to design a method of consolidation treatment that would meet the challenge presented by the coat of resin.
JTI/HPCS USA was commissioned to carry out the prescribed work. A Fein MultiMaster oscillating saw was used to cut every second plaster key and lug throughout the resin-coated area so that enough raw plaster was exposed to allow the HPCS consolidation products to thoroughly penetrate. This difficult work was carried out without incurring any additional losses of plaster. A variety of HPCS products were applied to consolidate and restore the ceiling. Subsequent independent testing, conducted by Dean Koga of Building Conservation Associates, confirmed a successful result. The project was the subject of an article that appeared in Traditional Building magazine. It was also the subject of a presentation given to the 2012 Association for Preservation Technology International Conference.