Becker’s Blog: The Columns are Coming!
Editor’s note: Joe Becker continues his report on the natural-stone segment of the St. Joseph Cathedral restoration in Sioux Falls, S.D.
“If the British march by land or sea from the town to-night, hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch ….”
Click on photo to enlargeHenry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride”. It depicts the anxious wait and then announcement that the British soldiers were coming.
Fast forward a couple hundred years, and there are anxious moments in Sioux Falls. The wait is not for columns of bayonet-carrying Redcoats, but for four large columns of green marble.
Maybe I should do a quick summary of events before the story continues. In a nutshell, here are the milestones:
• January 2010: Rosso Barocco columns awarded.
• April 2010: Rosso Barroco quarry, located in Turkey, opened for the season and quarry operations started.
• May 2010: Shop drawings approved and sent to Italy.
• June 2010: Encouraging news from quarry with location of a 17’ block. Bad news followed that the block contained cracks and couldn’t be used. Quarrying continues.
• August 2010: No news from the quarry – only 2½ months left in the season because of winter conditions.
Click on photo to enlarge
• September 2010: Agostino Pocai and I fly (on our dime) to Antalya, Turkey, to find out what is reality. Our window for getting columns to the church by February 2011 iss closing fast.
• October 2010: With no chance of obtaining a Rosso Barroco block, we announce that the Bishop must select another marble. Truly devastating news to the entire construction team.
• November 2010: Verde St Denis from northern Italy selected.
• March 21, 2011: Columns arrive at jobsite – but in an unusual way.
Longfellow’s poem continues “… One if by land and two if by sea and I on the opposite shore will be …..” Our columns did follow Longfellow’s words, but instead came “one by air and three by sea.”