Wing Lake Developmental Center, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

   In the years since then, education remained a priority on the site, and attempts were made to recreate the look of the 1859 schoolhouse through various additions and adaptations.
   Now, more than 150 years later, Bloomfield Hills Schools is finishing up construction of a new 40,000 ft² classroom building that goes a long way toward blending the past and present together – right down to the use of some 19th-century construction methods.
  
CONTEXTUAL FIT
   Stephen Smith, AIA, of TMP Architecture in Bloomfield Hills, says the presence of the historic schoolhouse was a driving factor in determining the look of the new Wing Lake Developmental Center, which includes a dozen classrooms, a media center and therapy rooms.
   “The local historical society had expressed concerns about the contextual fit of a new building on the site,” Smith says. “The school district agreed that the context should be one of the driving factors in the image of the new building.”
   Luckily, he adds, additions to the historic building in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s had accustomed people to seeing newer construction on the site.
   As the designer for the project, TMP also had more than a passing interested in the site. The firm specializes in schools from preschool to colleges and universities, and is locally based.
   “We were a logical choice for a project like this,” Smith says.
   The new developmental center sits behind and adjacent to the old school, and Smith says he made a conscious effort to bring its look to the new project.
   “We tried to pick up some of the notable proportions and shapes and forms of the old school and incorporate them,” he says. “We did that by repeating a series of stone gables across the elevation of the new building, which proportionately matches the old stone school. We also used the same native fieldstone in colors, sizes, textures and layers to match the way the old building was constructed.”
   Of course, finding the best way to take TMP Architecture’s design and incorporate it with 19th-century construction processes made the project a challenge, and one that didn’t proceed in the usual fashion. 
   Smith attributes some of the success to the fact that school board member David Lubin is also an architect who was invaluable in helping find just the right people for the job.
   “During the design process, we contacted a number of masons in the area who had worked with fieldstone before,” says Smith. “They, in turn, were familiar with some of the sources that were available for the stone that’s historically found in this area.”
  
THE RIGHT STONE
   A key player in that part of the process was Pontiac, Mich.-based George W. Auch Co., which served as construction manager and represented the school board in the building process.
   Jeff Hamilton, Auch vice president, explains that as with TMP, one of that company’s specialties is education. He says as soon as TMP had developed the construction documents, his company started work on finding just the right masonry firm for the job.
   “We had a pre-bid meeting where we went through and discussed what the intentions were for the stone and how we were going to replicate what was there,” he says. “We also have a lot of history from other projects with the low bidder, Brazen & Greer Masonry Inc. (of Livonia, Mich.)
   “Once they had the bid, we went through a review with them, so not only did they know the complete scope of the job, but one of the main items we discussed was how they were going to purchase and install the product.”
   Of particular concern, Hamilton adds, was getting the right color mix for the stone, as well as the fabrication of the larger pieces, especially the corners.
   “Brazen & Greer worked very closely with us to identify and cull out the right mixture of stone to be as faithful to the original historic building as we could be,” says Smith. “They also helped us locate the right supplier for the material.”
   That turned out to be CornerStone Marketing Group Inc., a Frankenmuth, Mich.-based stone supplier. CornerStone President Scott D. Moore explains that the construction team was working with one of that company’s distributors and brought the supplier into the mix.
   “We do natural cobblestones and thin veneer,” Moore explains. “We also have guys who split for us exclusively. After the dealer came to us with this project, we sent some samples and product information, and our company was speced by the architect.”
   Getting just the right stone – in the right blend – was no easy process, despite the fact that some of it was literally at hand.
    “There was still a lot of the native stone onsite,” Smith says. “We stockpiled that stone, as well as stone from one of the additions that was built in the 1940s and the district is planning to use it for an element wall or other feature to better tie the history of the site together.”
   Moore says he consulted a geologist to help find just the right stone.
   “Even with glacial tills moving and mixing stone over the years, there are different shades of it available around Michigan,” he says. “There are different minerals in some areas and, for example, deposits with high iron content don’t make for a positive building-stone application, because the stone will bleed down the walls.”
   Then, once Moore believed he had the best stones in-hand, Brazen and Greer had to do mockup walls to present to the architects and the school board to assess both the aesthetics and the color blend.
   “We were trying to match a schoolhouse that had been built in 1859,” says Moore. “We had to make sure we matched it up from a geological standpoint, and that we had good-quality rock in the right color scheme.”
   Moore notes that the masons involved in the work also added their own creativity to the job – simply by the stones and colors they selected. Smith believes those skilled craftsmen became quite interested in that part of the process.
   “Once we had those sample panels, we tweaked them to make sure we had the right size and combination of stone, that we turned the corner the right way, and the mortar joints were the right color, texture and scale,” says Smith. “The masons were tremendous in getting into the spirit of the design intent.”
   Once the masonry portion of the job reached that point, it still presented additional challenges, according to CornerStone’s Moore. The stone still needed to be hand-selected to meet the requirements established with the sample panels.
   “Not only were we selecting for size, but we were concerned with the percentage of colors in each piece,” he explains. “Most of the sizing had to be about a third black in color.”
  
HARKENING BACK
   CornerStone really provided three separate products for the job. The first was 40 tons of 4”-6” thick-veneer split fieldstone with face sizes from 6”-12”. Of that stone, 35 percent had to be black to match the old schoolhouse.
   The second was 400 4”-6” thick-veneer split-fieldstone jams. Most of the faces on those measured 16” X 24”, but some were as large as 16” X 30”.
   “Those are the corners, and back then, they were really doing rough fabrication,” Moore says. “They’d just roll up big pieces of stone for the corners and then cut them off fairly square. They’re huge pieces. To get that big a face with the thinner stone used in today’s applications was a challenge, both for us and the masons.”
   The final part of the order called for 200 soldiers: stones about 14” high, and 3”-8” in length, also in the 4”-6” split veneer. While Moore says the main concern with the corners was that they not have too many white-colored stones in the mix, the soldiers – as with the cobbles – needed to be 35-percent black.
   “The soldiers went across the top of the windows and the doors,” Moore explains. “It was neat to see that was the principle back then in building applications. It provides a nice, clean look.”
   As demanding as the order was, Moore says his crews faced an unexpected challenge with this job: winter weather that was some of the worst in recent memory. And, his fabrication crews weren’t just selecting the stone manually – they were also hand-cutting it.
   Moore says their ability to do that task sets them apart.
   “All of the old-timers once knew how to do that work, but they’ve gone by the wayside, and they haven’t mentored the young people coming up,” he says. “Swinging a stone-splitting sledge is a lost art. When you’re splitting a 2’-3’ boulder to get those big pieces, and squaring them up, it’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination.”
   Even so, Moore isn’t complaining. He says the challenges of weather and hand-splitting are almost appropriate given the historic nature of the job.
   “When you look at what the folks had to do in 1859 to build a wall like that, they had horses and muscle and sheer will,” he says.
   And, he adds that it only took approximately three months from when CornerStone received the purchase order until the last of the product was delivered.
   While fabricating the stone was done much as it would have been handled in 1859, Auch’s Hamilton notes the big difference with the current project is that it’s done as a veneer-over-block, rather than a true wall. That aside, Brazen & Greer did the installation much as it would have been done in the mid-19th century.
   “It was stacked in the same manner,” Hamilton says. “Back then, they would have set the forms up for the day, stacked the stone and placed the mortar to the height of those forms, and then the next day they’d move the forms up another couple feet. They build in linear lines and that was replicated on the building so the appearance has a linear look.”
   Watching the masons utilize 150-year-old techniques was one of the most-interesting parts of what the project manager calls a real hybrid.
“The stonework looks old, but the design incorporating it is a hybrid design, and the roof provides a modern look,” he says. “Luckily, we’ve had great contractors and a wonderful plan up front, which is why it’s been a very fun project.”
   Brian Goby, the school’s director of physical plant services, agrees. The district expects to move into the new building over the summer and be ready to handle classes for the 2008-2009 school year.
   “It’s just been a perfect project,” Goby says.
   Architect Smith says even as the stone awaits cleaning, people have stopped by the site to comment on how nicely it blends with the old stone school. As for the 1859 building, it’s going to receiving some restoration work, as well, and become an historic classroom where students from the district can spend a day learning what it was like to attend school in 1859.
   “Everyone understood how important it was for the school district to make a fitting statement on this site,” concludes Smith. “The district also had a willingness to provide the level of service to do it right. There’s been a real synergy in terms of making an historic statement that supports the image of the old stone school.”
  
   Client: Bloomfield Hills Schools, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
   Designer: TMP Architecture, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
   Construction Manager: George W. Auch Co., Pontiac, Mich.
   Mason: Brazen & Greer Masonry Inc., Livonia, Mich.
   Stone Supplier: CornerStone Marketing Group Inc., Frankenmuth, Mich.