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By Paul Kelsey Williams

Like icing on a cake, a smooth coat of stucco adds a handsome finishing touch to a building's exterior. A relatively inexpensive cladding, stucco - a cementitious coating - has dressed mundane brick, fieldstone, and wood structures for centuries, giving them the appearance of wealth and stature. More important, stucco in good condition protects the building from the elements, but if it is not properly maintained, it can lead to problems. A visit to a complex project reveals the techniques, as well as some of the challenges, that a Virginia based restoration firm faced when reviving this historic façade.

The massive mansion known as Morven Park, located just north of Leesburg, Virginia and less than an hour's drive from Washington, DC, is currently undergoing a massive, two year, $2 million dollar restoration project to restore it to a significant aspect of its history, the focus of which has been a challenging removal and reapplication of its historic stucco façade.

The mansion has been home to two Governors, one from Maryland and one from Virginia, and stands today amid 1,200 pristine acres as fascinating ensemble of myriad building campaigns, remolding, additions, expansions, and even conjoining of different houses, all literally joined together over the past 250 years by an even covering of painted and patched stucco.

The house has evolved from a circa 1750 fieldstone farmhouse to its current turn of the century appearance through ambitious building campaigns, the first of which was undertaken by Maryland Governor Thomas Swann from 1840-1883, who added to a Greek Revival portico a series of four Italianate towers. Subsequently removed, the interior and exterior of the house changed dramatically during the time it was owned by Governor and Mrs. Westmorland Davis from 1902 to 1955, as it had with previous owners, and now displays an eclectic bevy of Greek Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Jacobean, and French interior features. Ultimately left to a foundation in 1967, the house came with an equally eclectic assortment of furnishing and interior decoration collected during the Davis' world travels.

Despite its rather uniform main façade, the other facades of the house reveal its rather unusual past as an assortment of buildings brought together and expanded from ten major building campaigns. The uniform appearance was enhanced by the addition of stucco, which concealed underlying sections and independent structures of stone, wood, and brick. Understandably, such an evolution has resulted in an almost constant attention to the maintenance of the stucco surface, patched together over 100 years, and often failing at key joints and allowing water infiltration.

Tidewater Preservation was contracted by the foundation that maintains Morven Park for both removal and reapplication of stucco to the exterior façade of the mansion, a massive task in itself that is just one of many phases of the overall interior and exterior restoration. While the complete project is expected to take approximately two years and a budget of $2 million, the stucco aspect had to be completed in one summer season due to the composition of the stucco, carefully selected to replicate as close to the original appearance as possible.

Tidewater Preservation founder and President Frederick Ecker II based his business on the philosophy of hiring preservation craftsmen and architectural conservators that share a philosophy of dedication toward conservation and preservation of the nation's significant structures, and their work at Morven Park clearly illustrates that principle.

Ecker began the project by reviewing the research of graduate student Jana Riggle who had completed an intensive look into the many rather quirky additions and expansion projects undertaken on the mansion over the years. Her work offered Tidewater an indication of the different materials expected under the stucco that proved to be correct.

The covering had been patched repeatedly with incorrect fillers such as Portland cement, says Morven Park executive director Will O'Keefe. "In my 11 years as director, we had a cyclical patching and painting requirement every 3-4 years," O'Keefe states, "with a rapidly deteriorating surface creating numerous water leaks all throughout the Mansion." The exterior needs became apparent, and were obviously scheduled first to prevent any further damage to the homes varied interior spaces.

Tidewater's first job onsite involved a series of core drilling in the exterior surface to determine what subsurface material supported the stucco. Workers discovered wood siding, wood sheathing, field stone, brick, and both chicken wire and galvanized wire mesh used to support the stucco. In some cases, entire sections of wood had rotted away, with only the stucco supporting the structure. Built-in gutters on the mansion had failed repeatedly, states Ecker, creating the "perfect condition for wood rot between the exterior stucco and the interior plaster walls."

Samples of the core drilling were sent for analysis to reveal the original stucco was lime based and also that its original coloration was that of a medium bodied sand tone. Most portions were also covered with more than 20 layers of paint.

While Tidewater installed scaffolding on the exterior, O'Keefe and his staff prepared the interior of the house by storing away furniture, paintings, and small decorative items, and by carefully supporting crystal chandeliers and heavy plaster ceiling medallions with scaffolding that would be subject to moderate to heavy vibrations expected during the process of prying off tons of the exterior stucco.

Tidewater began to remove the stucco in various areas by utilizing a similar technique of careful prying with a small crowbar placed between the subsurface and the deepest layer of stucco, being careful to minimize damage to the underlying surface, whether it is composed of wood, brick, or stone. Windows and doors had been removed off site as part of their own restoration, and were replaced with plywood or Plexiglas to prevent damage. Lower portions of the façade and wood detailing were protected from falling stucco with layers of plywood, while larger portions of stucco were lowered to the ground.

Stucco that had been applied over chicken wire proved to be the most difficult portions to remove, according to Ecker, because they necessitated the cutting of the old wire while simultaneously removing portions of hard stucco, which often took two workers to perform in concert. Tons of stucco were eventually removed, and fortunately could be disposed of on the property itself, which has approximately 1,200 acres of heavily treed and landscaped grounds.

Once the old stucco had been fully removed, a methodical process that took several months, general repair was necessary for the underlying material; repointing of brick and stone, repair or replacement of rotted wood, and in some cases the fabrication of new wood supports in anticipation of the newly applied stucco.

During the removal phase, Tidewater honed in on matching the original coloration of the stucco by experimenting with a local sand base, mixed with sands obtained from other geographical areas. By recreating the original composition of sand tinted, lime based stucco, the newly applied material would eliminate the need for painting as it would emulate the as close to the original color of the house as could be recreated. In this case, the conservators of the house has asked to recreate the exterior to its most significant period, that of the Davis occupation, which lasted from 1903 to 1942.

Ecker advises that the key to a correct sand coloration match is to use a locally based sand, as would have been done at the time period, but mixing it with from sand from other quarries to come up with a close match. Similar to stone, sand color changes when quarried from different levels within the same quarry, so he suggests ordering enough sand all at once to complete the entire job.

Commercially common sands on the mass market today tend to be too washed to be effective, Ecker says, and too large of an individual grain. Tidewater sifted their sand mixture to separate the fine granules that would result in a smooth finish on the surface of the mansion. Most commercial applications of stucco today are artificially colored with tints, which can vary from batch to batch. They are also commonly composed of a premixed acrylic or latex base, both of which are not suitable for restoration projects as they tend to be far too rigid for older construction.

Tidewater applied galvanized mesh screening to several sections of the repaired subsurface of Morven Park, specifically at portions that included joints of different building materials, where a stone wall met a brick surface, for example. It also covered any exterior walls composed of wood siding or wood sheathing in order to provide a solid base to hold the stucco. Large areas of brick or stone could serve as a sufficient base for adhering the stucco directly on its surface.

The lime based stucco was mixed on site and applied in three layers; a scratch coat that covered and evened the subsurface, a brown coat, and finally, the outermost tinted coat that would serve as both the buildings exterior surface as well as its final medium bodied sand color.

Unlike new construction, the reapplication of stucco on a historic structure provides no opportunity for expansion joints, and often entire facades at Morven Park had to be stuccoed at one time to prevent discoloration of the final surface. When joints were necessary, created between different days of layering the stucco, they were placed at the most unobtrusive areas as possible, such as corners or above or below large window or door openings.

One of the many challenges of the stucco portion of the overall restoration project was the intensive job required to be completed in just one summer season. This was partly due to the size and many exterior features of the home, and also because the lime based material used on Morven Park is more susceptible to freezing than it more common, and cheaper, commercially available premixed stucco products.

Unlike many house museums, a conscience effort to keep Morven Park open to the public during its two year renovation was a goal of its Executive Director and Melissa York, the Director of Educational Programs at the estate. She saw it as an opportunity to educate the public about the renovation phases, who she thought should understand that maintenance issues and proper care are just as critical to Morven Park as it should be in their older homes. Tour guides and docents at the mansion received frequent updates from the restoration crew on the progress of the stucco removal and reapplication, and conveyed the inherent surprises and problems encountered along the way with such an extensive renovation.

When the windows were removed for protection and restoration, facsimile mutins and mullions were placed on the temporary Plexiglas windows so that the mansion would retain its appearance from afar during the two year renovation effort. York hopes that visitors take home a hands on lesson in the restoration efforts in addition to their experience visiting a historical residence, which becomes a truly interactive experience as guests wind their way under interior scaffolding supporting the entry hall chandelier, for example. For those wishing to experience the completed project, however, vouchers are offered to return to the site once the restoration project is completed in the summer of 2005.

Paul K. William is President of Kelsey & Associates, Architectural Historians,
(202) 462-3389, washingtonhistory.com.