COIGNET BUILDING – BROOKLYN LANDMARK PHASE II
BROOKLYN, NY

As masonry contractor, Stone & Lime Historic Restoration Services completed the restoration masonry exterior of the 1870’s historic Coignet Building located in Brooklyn, NY. Work included the manufacture and installation of custom precast blocks, patching of original blocks and cleaning the building exterior. When work began on the restoration of the Coignet Building in 2014, little was known about the cast stone and its composition. The first step was to understand the materials and how they were deteriorating in order to know how to best repair the cast stone. As part of the materials study, petrographic and chemical examinations were performed on cast stone samples. The findings were illuminating, and utilized to fabricate over 300 new blocks for installation.

In 2016, the project won the prestigious Lucy J. Moses preservation award.

HISTORIC CONTEXT

In 1873, the New York and Long Island Coignet Stone Company built offices along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New York to serve as an advertisement for the company’s cast stone products. Rusticated, smooth, beveled and ornamented surfaces decorated the cast stone blocks, displaying the possibilities of the new cast stone material. One hundred and forty years later, the Coignet Building remained barely standing, and the original company was long gone. It may be the earliest cast stone building in the country. What also made it so important, was that it represented the industrialization of building products and the growing importance of concrete.