I came across another ugly travertine installation on Monday. A contractor
called, asked me to come look at an old limestone fireplace that the
homeowner wanted restored.

The house was built in 1939 on the ruins of an earlier (probably c. 1910)
home which had burned down. They built around a massive romanesque
fireplace, 7' columns with corinthian caps (a bit incongruous on
romanesque, but whatever). Unusual- the firebox was about 4' wide, 7' high,
rather shallow, built with common brick. Lots of mortar gaps with smoke
stains going through them. Huge flue, but still, I wonder if that is where
the fire started that burned down the house.

Back in '39 they apparantly didn't think there was quite enough space for
the new wall in front of the fireplace, so they chopped off the volutes
from the caps, the coners of the column bases, and the carved cartouche
with foliage from the center of the lintel. They also hacked off the
molding on the cornice. They then ran screws into the face of the lintel to
anchor the furring strips, furred out the wall. The bottom was clad in
travertine slab, a psuedo-deco look, and above was drywall. By the time
they were done furring it out they were a couple inches off the stone, so
it turns out the carved elements wouldn't have been in the way- they could
have left the fireplace intact.

Homeowner was concerned that I was making really ugly disgusted faces while
first looking at it, and wanted ideas of how I could preserve the existing
fireplace. (theres nothing worthwhile left but the columns). There sure
isn't much to work with.
____________________________________
Walter S. Arnold  * [log in to unmask]
Gallery:        http://www.stonecarver.com
Gargoyle postcards: http://www.stonecarver.com/postcard.html

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