This is very interesting to me.  I have never seen the "White House."  I
never thought about what material it was made of,  I just assumed it was
clapboard painted white just like the white houses around here.  Ruth




At 8:44 PM -0400 5/7/04, [log in to unmask] wrote:
In a message dated 5/7/2004 12:31:53 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

Ralph:

It isn't brownstone.  It is Aquia Creek Sandstone. "I see," said the blind
man, as he picked up his hammer and saw. The sandstone has a buff color. Ah.

The reason the White House is white is that the Aquia Creek Sandstone
needed to be painted to preserve the structure.  It started to deteriorate
soon after construction, and then the stoned spalled a good bit when the
British burned the White House in 1814 during the War of 1812. Don't know
whether I've reported this little tidbit before, but when Marcus Whiffen,
who taught me arch'l history at ASU, told us about the Capitol and various
other buildings in DC, he reported that soon after coming to the US (he was
from England, and as I remember first came to the US to work as an arch'l
historian on Colonial Williamsburg in the late 40's-early 50's), he and his
wife (who called him as Martzy, BTW; that's my personal insight into the
lives of the famous historians) went on a tour of the Capitol with a bunch
of other tourists.  So as their guide was telling the group about how
during the War of 1812 the Brits burned the White House and the Capitol,
Whiffen in a loud stage whisper asked his wife if she had a match.

  The stone was patched and then whitewashed. If we put political cynicism
aside, this is an early, "flashy" example of using lime washes to preserve
stone.

Sounds like another (but early!) example of a basically shitty material
being schmeared over to cover up its inherent defects.  Good thing THAT
doesn't happen any more, huh?  Steve, do you have any sense of whether
these conservation treatments were good for the base material?  I suppose
on the theory that the buildings are still there, they probably worked---or
are they still there--or is what we're seeing all patches and dutchmen
under Philadelphia cream cheese?

Ralph

--
Ruth Barton
[log in to unmask]
Dummerston, VT

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