Crownover Chapel, Fairland, TX

Tscarborough

This was built by parishoners over a 10 year period, 1859-1870. It served as a school as well as a Methodist church. The construction is double wyth, rubble filled. The interior is stucco, with a plaster dropped ceiling and a raised pecan floor. Overall, it is in very poor to derilict shape. It appears to have been tuckpointed at least 5 times, and each one has made the problem worse.



In the center of the pic is the original lime plaster. It is eroded pretty bad, but it is gone under the areas that were tuckpointed.



This jack arch looks a little shallow to me, I can see why it would drop.



Same here, too shallow and with little or no lip into the field.



The footing appears to be just stacked stone in a trench.

Edited to update links.

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Rybit

Another great old building Tscar!

I'm curious about the term you use when saying "no lip into the field".

Those front doors' jack arches are screaming for a relief arch over them in the field. Lots of pressure coming down. It would look odd over the windows, but would have saved them.

There doesn't seem to be much (if any) toothing between the lifts either, and a place or two where the bond looks weak.


Still, cool looking building. It reminds me of an old jail house I found in Nebraska one hunting season.

Tscarborough

Keeping in mind that it was laid by local farmers, it isn't so bad, except for the arches. What I mean about the jack arch is that the outer stones are not sitting on the adjacant stones at the spring lines, they are butted to them. With a well designed and laid jack arch you don't need to lip it, but it certainly doesn't hurt when using rough stone roughly laid.

Attached Images

 

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Rybit

D'oh. I was looking at the words and matching the wrong picture. I was looking at the footing and reading about the jacks, scratching my head going, huh(?)But I see exactly what you are saying. The two springers don't have any bed at all. I agree about the farmers doing pretty well though. Heck it's still standing.



Say you were charged with 'preserving' this structure for the historical society. What would you do? Remove all the different tuckpointing and use lime to re point? or would you use cement? Would you try to get the jacks relaid to avoid further demise? Would you use relief arches over the doors up in the wall to lighten the loads on the jacks?

Tscarborough

Grind out and retuck the entire thing with lime mortar, since it is double wythe rubble filled. I would remove the jack arches entirely and replace them with rough looking but correctly sized and angled stones.

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It ain't Rocket Science unless you are building rockets.