“The Railway Exchange Building: A Terra Cotta Renovation”

AboutStephen J. Kelley and Jerry G. Stockbridge, engineers with the preservation-engineering firm Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, present a technical case study of the 1985 facade renovation of the Railway Exchange Building in St. Louis (Mauran, Russell & Crowell, completed 1913), the flagship office building and department store constructed for David May's Famous & Barr, whose glazed cream terra cotta cladding was one of the first large-scale uses of that material in the city. The article notes the building's design competed against, and was influenced by, precedents including Louis Sullivan's Wainwright Building and Union Trust Building in St. Louis and Sullivan's Carson, Pirie, Scott store in Chicago, the latter studied directly by architect J. F. Roache while researching an earlier, unbuilt 1905 scheme for the same site. The authors describe the investigation of corroded steel bearing brackets and cracked terra cotta glazing, laboratory testing of the material's moisture absorption and structural stresses, and the renovation's two-part chemical cleaning, steel window replacement, and precast-concrete patch-repair methods, completed on a fast-track schedule to coincide with the opening of the adjacent St. Louis Centre mall.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0848-8525%281988%2920%3A3%3C15%3ATREBAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C