Market Hall Brought Back to Life

Designed in accordance with the Golden Mean and built in 1841, Market Hall was modeled after the Temple of Nike in Athens. The building has long been considered the masterwork of Charleston’s premiere architect of the mid-19th century, Edward Brickell White, and the handsomely detailed and gracefully proportioned building stands out in a city known for its early architecture and important landmarks.

The two-story building was originally built to form the western terminus of the city’s public market, a series of low, one-story, open-sided brick sheds stretching four blocks from Meeting St., the city’s main commercial thoroughfare, east to the waterfront. North Market St. and South Market St. sit just a few feet from the north and south elevations respectively and Market Hall created a grand entrance to the market from the commercial district. The open ground floor provided space for vendors and offices for the market manager and constable, and the upper level contained a large public meeting hall.

Damage from Civil War bombardments, an earthquake in 1886, decades of infrequent maintenance and finally Hurricane Hugo in 1989 had left the building with serious structural cracks and a severely deteriorated façade.

The top floor of Market Hall was leased to the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1899 for a Civil War museum. When the hurricane hit almost a century later in 1989, the museum had to move to temporary quarters. After conducting stabilization, Charleston’s mayor, Joseph P. Riley, Jr., launched a national search in 1992 for a team to conduct the restoration of Market Hall. Joseph K. Oppermann, FAIA, of Winston-Salem, NC, was selected to lead that effort.

The $3.6-million restoration was completed in 2002. The two-story building provides 4,200 sq.ft. of net space. The restored first floor is open for vendors again and the Daughters of the Confederacy now has a state-of-the-art Civil War Museum on the second floor.

Market Hall is the “epitome of illusion in architecture,” says Oppermann. “It was built of inexpensive brick trimmed with brownstone, but then the brick was coated with stucco that was molded and scored to look like large blocks of rusticated brownstone on the ground floor walls and like fine ashlar cut stone on the upper floor level. Tinted limewash was added as a protective coat and to unify the appearance of the “stone” façade. Inside, common pine doors were grained to look like expensive oak and wood mantels were faux painted to look like marble. In addition, a balcony with an oculus above the foyer creates a dramatic entrance, but there are no stairs to the balcony and the balcony doorways lead nowhere.

“This project provided a lot of challenges,” Oppermann says. “To start, Charleston is located in an earthquake zone, the site is a former creek bed and the building is constructed of load-bearing masonry, which does not do well in earthquakes. One of the first things we did was to set up monitoring devices to check the cracks that had occurred in the building as a result of an earthquake in 1886. These operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for six months, through one cycle from hot to cold.”

Two major areas of damage to the masonry were discovered and in both locations the cracks extended from below grade all the way through the cornice. The walls were probed to determine the full extent of the cracks. The repair, devised by structural engineer David C. Fischetti, P.E., of Cary, NC, included the replacement of sheared brick and then the placement of stainless-steel serrated rods in the mortar joints to stitch the walls back together. The building was also made more stable by inserting diaphragms at the first floor and attic levels to better tie the walls together. Salem Contracting of Indian Trail, NC, conducted the masonry repairs.

Extensive damage was also discovered in the roof timbers. “The heavy timber trusses in the attic had extensive rot and were full of termites,” Oppermann explains. Fischetti devised repairs that included the removal of damaged sections and the insertion of Dutchman repairs. The framing was repaired by members of the Timber Framers Guild, led by Mike Goldberg of Woodstock, GA, and Peter Bull of Cleveland, GA. Some damaged areas, such as a splintered section of a truss in the attic that had been hit by canon fire during the Civil War, were kept in their found condition. “We left that damage so that there would be tangible evidence of that chapter of the building’s history,” Oppermann says.

For the roof, the architectural team decided to go back to the standing-seam metal roof of the 1840s but used copper instead of reproducing the red painted ferric-based metal roof on the original building. Picquet Roofing of Charleston, SC, installed the roof. “We decided to go with the copper because it requires little maintenance,” Oppermann notes. “In this maritime climate, a ferric-based metal roof would have to be scraped and repainted about every seven years.”

The team, under the supervision of architectural conservator Frank Matero, Director of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania, also went to great lengths to retain other early building fabric. The exterior stucco, for example, was evaluated using European assessment techniques. “This was the first time these techniques had been used in the U.S.,” Oppermann says. “The evaluation process was quite extensive and the results for each elevation were different. For example, on the east elevation that faces the Atlantic Ocean, there was excessive deterioration caused by wind-borne salt and that pattern of deterioration was different from the other elevations. Digitized photographs of each elevation and other major building planes were used to locate and quantify the types of deterioration.”

Once the analysis was complete, incompatible modern stucco patches were removed and missing sections were replaced with stucco of a compatible mix. Where original stucco remained, acrylic injections were used to reattach delaminated layers of stucco and loose stucco to the brick. Similar methods of assessment and repair were used for the plaster on the interior. Both the stucco and plaster conservation was performed by Dillon Construction Services of Irmo, SC.

Before any assessment or remedial action could be made, however, many layers of paint had to be removed. One very tenacious type was an elastomeric paint that also had the unfortunate characteristic of trapping water in the masonry walls. A variety of different methods were tested to remove these paints. “What was both the least harmful to the masonry and the most effective was steam,” says Oppermann.

The front steps were another challenge. “Each step was a single, 9-ft.-long block of stone, 12 in. deep and eight in. tall, with no seams,” says Oppermann, “and the treads were badly deteriorated.” Portland Brownstone Quarries of Cheshire, CT, which mines the same vein from which the original stairs came, was able to produce large blocks for consideration. Oppermann went to the quarry and personally marked the narrow sections of each block from which the step would be cut.

The exterior ironwork was cleaned and repaired by Asheville Ironworks of Asheville, NC. A new brass handrail was added at a height to improve accessibility by the handicapped and the existing ironwork was repainted its original bright green color. “This shade of green is actually very typical of the 1840s throughout the country and we have found it on a number of buildings in the Low Country, though most people were surprised when it was identified,” Oppermann says. New copper lanterns, designed to burn gas as did the originals, were built to replace those removed in the late-19th century. Made by John Gant of Charleston, SC, these were based on historical photographs, including a pair taken by Civil War photographer Matthew Brady in 1865 during the Union occupation.

The interior restoration of the building was also extensive. In addition to the consolidation of flat plaster, new sections of plaster details were cast and installed as infill where there were damaged and missing elements. Dutchman repairs were made to the original pine floors and woodwork and original surface colors were identified and reproduced. The decorative painting was executed by Plantation Painters, Inc., of Charleston, SC, and Jim Jacobs of Charleston Woodworks, also of Charleston, was responsible for the interior woodwork.

On the ground floor, modern enclosures were removed. Archaeologists, under the direction of Martha Zierden from the Charleston Museum, excavated the site for clues about the early construction and the original open plan was restored.

Converting the second floor into a museum-quality display space for the Daughters of the Confederacy also called for quite a bit of contemporary technology combined with the use of historic materials and traditional skills. The existing plaster ceiling, ceiling cove and decorative plaster moldings were repaired and repainted and mechanical systems and drop pendant sprinklers were installed within the designs of this ceiling.

Another bit of 20th-century technology added to Market Hall was the handicap elevator. In addition, museum-quality HVAC systems were introduced using linear diffusers inconspicuously inserted at the edges of the plaster ceiling. The original floorboards on the second level were labeled and removed so the floor joists below could be repaired. They were reinstalled in the original locations.

“For a museum, the environmental conditions were especially challenging,” says Oppermann. “We had to deal with sunlight flooding in from large windows on three elevations, extreme heat in summer and high humidity year-round. The mechanical system had to moderate these conditions for very sensitive collections. A part of the solution included the addition of a thermal window with UV-filtering inside the existing sash of each window. The framing of the new window is configured to align with the stiles and rails of the original triple-hung sash. And each section of the new window is removable to allow maintenance and repair.” The environmental systems were designed by Landmark Facilities Group, Inc., of East Norwalk, CT, and the new thermal windows were constructed by Hope’s Windows of Jamestown, NY.

Of the restoration, Oppermann says: “While a full complement of engineers is important for the restoration effort, as in new design, there are a number of other professions that are essential to a restoration. It is a team effort. Everyone has a critical part in the effort: architect, engineer, historian, archaeologist and conservator.”

The City of Charleston, Joseph K. Oppermann, FAIA, and NBM Construction Co. received the National Preservation Honor Award for the restoration of Market Hall from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in October, 2003. That award stated, in part: “Charleston has long been revered as a model for historic preservation and the painstaking attention to detail in the restoration of Market Hall further illustrates Charleston’s dedication to maintaining its historic landmarks.” – Martha McDonald

www.palladioawards.com
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Last Updated February 15, 2008