Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Indianapolis

The state’s soaring limestone memorial to its more than 24,000 Civil War dead was dedicated in 1902 and initially cost $600,000 to construct. As a state, Indiana was second only to Delaware in the number of men, per capita, who served; fully 75 percent of those eligible to serve did so.

The downtown monument last underwent a major renovation in the late 1980s. Last year, however, officials noticed major problems with the two semicircular bowls on the upper level of the monument’s fountain.

To provide the solution, the public works division of the Indiana Department of Administration turned to the architect, masonry contractor and stone supplier who had handled the work almost two decades ago.

Brig. Gen. J. Stewart Goodwin, executive director of the Indiana War Memorials Commission, says when he took that position in mid-2005 it was apparent the bowls – which were not included in the earlier renovation – were having problems.

"The bowls were really deteriorating,” he says. “With 5,000 gallons-per-minute flowing over the spillway, you could see that the limestone had simply deteriorated.”

Greg Miller, who managed the project for the Indianapolis architectural firm of Schmidt Associates, says state officials determined the condition of the bowls reached a point where repairs had to be made quickly without regard for bidding the work.

"The way the memorial is designed, there are two large cascades on the east and west sides of it, with water flowing from the large bowls into pools below them,” he explains. “Piece of stone had begun slipping off the bowls where the water comes out of the pumps. The degradation was noticeable, even with water running over them.”

Having determined that safety issues were involved and bids weren’t required, the state opted to assemble the same team that had worked on the previous restoration: Schmidt; the Indianapolis-based Broady Campbell Inc., as masonry contractor; and the Carmel and Bedford, Ind.-based Stone Clad Inc., as the stone supplier.  Stone Clad’s Gerhard Gaiser recalls the 1987 restoration and two subsequent phases as a massive project.

“In 1987, we redid the whole monument, except for the bowls,” he says. “At that time they scaffolded the entire monument, including the statue, and I took pictures of every flaw, every chip, every crack and every missing piece of limestone for the whole monument.”
Since the monument tops out at 284.5’, Gaiser says he ended up with about $5,000 worth of black-and-white photos of every aspect of the structure and an extremely detailed knowledge of every part of the monument.

Stone Clad provided all the stonework and carving in 1987, with Broady Campbell handling the installation. The two firms also participated in a 1990 phase that installed a new elevator in the structure, and the 1993 phase that removed and reinstalled many of the structural elements to reduce leaking into the below-ground museum.

Greg Broady, vice president of Broady Campbell, says when his firm was called in to assess the condition of the limestone bowls last year, the extent of their deterioration was readily apparent.

“Over a period of time they’d exfoliated and were shaling off,” he says. “When we finally removed the bowl on the west side, it had cracked, but the pieces were keyed together. Had the crack extended across all the pieces, there could have been some danger of it falling.”

With the need to replace the bowls evident, the matter became one of scheduling the work and getting it done. However, fabricating and then installing the pieces ran on two distinct timetables. Schmidt’s Miller says much of the scheduling relied heavily on teamwork between Stone Clad and Broady Campbell.

Neither Miller nor Gaiser say matching the stone was a problem. “We knew the type of limestone we needed – the gray oolitic Indiana limestone,” says Miller. “We also knew the original quarry that had provided it had long since been closed. But, Gerhard Gaiser knew which quarry he needed to go to and knew exactly how much lead time we needed to get the stone out and aged.”

Gaiser says finding a producer of the gray oolitic limestone wasn’t as difficult as finding one capable of cutting the blocks needed for the job. Each bowl is made of six pieces, with the largest weighing 15,000 lbs and measuring approximately 14’ X 5’ X 2’.

“I went to the Indiana Limestone Co.’s PM&B (also known as the Empire because it provided the limestone for the Empire State Building) quarry,” says Gaiser. “Generally the PM&B is the lightest gray in the district here, and it’s also one of the quarries where you can get big blocks.

“That’s the reason we went to the Indiana Limestone Co.; that’s the only place we could get blocks that big.”

For the same reason, Gaiser selected Bedford, Ind.-based Evans Limestone Co., to do the fabrication. He adds that he knew the company had the skilled manpower to execute the job.

“The blocks were quarried last year and then held at the Evans yard,” says Gaiser. “Then, they started fabricating this past spring. They were done well before the old bowls were taken out. Obviously, you don’t want to start and then not have all the material.”

Evans’ Frank Ira says the Indiana Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument was a special one for his firm, which normally crafts building facades.

“Probably drafting the actual layout was the most-difficult thing,” Ira says. “Once we achieved that, we made patterns and the guys cut them.” Both Ira and Gaiser explain that a surveyor was sent out to take laser images of the originals from every possible angle. Everyone agrees that documentation for the original construction was spotty, and subsequent work has relied on what was generated during the 1987 renovation.

Schmidt’s Miller says that precision was key to the current project. 

"We had to request very precise drawings,” he says. “Each piece of stone was measured. Of course, they discovered defects and abnormalities that made us question whether we could build them like they were built the first time, but the goal was to exactly replicate what had been there previously.”

Once the pieces were sawn to approximate size, Evans’ craftsmen went in and cut the stone to its final shape by hand.
“It just starts at one end, and a couple guys work it on through,” Ira says. “The rims are a whalebacked-bullnose – basically a circle on a circle.”

While Evans completed the component pieces last spring, the second part of the project – removing the old pieces and installing the replacements – had to be worked into the monument’s calendar. Brig. Gen. Goodwin says the monument is more than just an Indianapolis icon. It also hosts more than 300 events each year, and it needs to be up-and-running during the community’s most-visible activities.

“When there are a lot of people in town, we need to have the fountains and everything going, so we needed to fit this work into a very specific window,” he says. “We chose the window between the Allstate® 400 at the Brickyard® NASCAR race and the first weekend in November, when the monument becomes the world’s largest Christmas tree – thanks to three miles of Christmas lights.”

After the running of the Brickyard 400 in early August, the fountains went off and a Broady Campbell crew began removing the old limestone bowls. As with the drawings for the bowls themselves, Schmidt’s Miller says a lack of information about the original construction left those involved puzzled over the best way to approach their removal.

“It was a lot of meetings onsite and people scratching their heads,” he says. “We couldn’t tell how much of the stone was embedded back into the monument. We figured out what the worst-case condition might be, and we relied heavily on a lot of teamwork between Stone Clad and Broady Campbell.”  Greg Broady says his firm set up a large crane in the traffic circle surrounding the monument and went to work.

“We tried to get them out in big pieces, but some of them we had to break apart,” he says. “Then, we had to clean out the shelf the stone sat on. Then, we started setting the pieces.”  Miller notes that the best evidence of the old limestone’s condition is that several of the pieces didn’t survive being trucked off the site.  The new pieces, two to a trailer, were then carefully loaded at the Evans yard and delivered in the early-morning hours to the site.

“Even though they’re large, they’re delicate,” observes Evans’ Ira. “We have overhead cranes in the mill and then large fork lifts that lift them on the trailers. We had to be real careful how we rigged them. We couldn’t have just gotten another block if something had happened.”

“We were lucky and were able to get two pieces on a truck,” says Gary Gaiser, Gerhard’s son and the head of Stone Clad. “We thought we might only be able to get one piece on a truck. We shipped them to the jobsite and dropped the trailer, and they swapped out trailers as the job progressed.”  Broady says the actual installation wasn’t that difficult, and the company’s six-man crew learned as it went along.

"Because of having to park the crane on the circle, we had to move the stone a pretty good distance,” says Broady. “Once we started setting the pieces, it took about eight days for each bowl. We did one side and then the other.”

Setting the two bowls did not complete the scope of work on the project, however. Broady says other work his company has done on the site includes the removal of some underwater lights in the lower ponds that weren’t being used, and stone patching in the area of the limestone bowls and around the outside railings.

“There have been a lot of holes that have appeared since the last time the work was done,” he says. “We put in a lot of Dutchman patches – minor pieces of stone replacement – especially in the areas near the water surfaces; they’ve really taken a beating. Stone Clad provided that stone as well.”

Although the contractors were essentially done with the project in time for the annual lighting of the Christmas tree at the monument, the early onset of colder weather kept those involved from completing one last test.

“About the only thing we haven’t seen is the water coming back on and running over the edges,” says Schmidt’s Miller. “We’re at the time of year where they don’t run the fountain anyway, but it won’t really be done until the water comes on.”

However, looking at the work to this point, Miller says, “It’s spectacular. The craftsmanship demonstrated by Broady Campbell and everyone else involved has just been tremendous.”

Perhaps that’s not surprising. Stone Clad’s Gary Gaiser says for him and for Greg Broady and his brother, Scott Broady, working on the monument was extra-special.

“It was a thrill to have my father have the opportunity to do something that means so much to the city,” he says. “To then have the opportunity to do it myself, well, it’s something I’ll tell my own kids about.”

From his position with the War Memorials Commission, Brig. Gen. Goodwin says he’s impressed by the work that was done, even though some of it – such as the application of sealants – will have to wait until spring.

“My father was in construction and I grew up around that, but these stone people are folks I had never been around before,” he says. “I have never met a more-professional group of people. I have seen people do these things with wood, but what they can do with stone is just remarkable."

This article first appeared in the December 2006 print edition of Stone Business. ©2006 Western Business Media Inc.