Walked past a old church in Philly last week and stopped to look at the brickwork

I was heading to a job on Market Street and noticed this church from the 1800s had all these perfect soldier courses above the windows, no chipped edges after a hundred plus years. The mortar joints were still tight and even, like the guy who laid them had a steady hand and a real eye for detail. Anyone else find themselves stopping to study old buildings and wonder what tools or methods they used back then?

3 comments

3 Comments

linda50028d ago

Those soldier courses are something else. My grandfather was a bricklayer in the 1920s and he told me they used lime mortar back then instead of Portland cement, which lets the bricks breathe and shifts with the weather. I notice the same thing on old row homes around here, the work is just different from modern builds. It makes you wonder if they took more pride in their craft because they knew the building would outlast them.

emmaj3328d ago

Wait, @linda500, didn't lime mortar need more upkeep than Portland cement though?

park.abby14d ago

Oh wait hold on, you're telling me people actually thought lime mortar needs MORE upkeep? That's wild because it's literally the opposite in my experience. I've seen century old brick buildings with lime mortar that just need a little repointing every hundred years or so, while modern Portland cement buildings start cracking and spalling within a couple decades. The thing is, Portland cement is so hard and rigid that it traps moisture inside the bricks, so when water freezes and expands it pushes the whole wall apart. But lime mortar is soft and breathable so it actually acts like a sacrificial layer that takes the damage instead of the bricks themselves. Maybe people think it's more work because you have to use the right mix and technique with lime, but honestly that's just doing the job properly instead of slapping on something that will destroy the building later.