Gothic Makeover

Historic Denver Church Gets Long Overdue Exterior Renovation

The exterior of Denver's Trinity United Methodist Church, a downtown landmark since 1888, recently received extensive repairs and restoration.

By Diana Murphy

Time and temperature hadn't been kind to Denver's Trinity United Methodist Church, the Modern Gothic landmark that has graced the intersection of 18th Street and Broadway since its opening in 1888.

Known for its fine stonework and intricate architectural detailing, the church's original sandstone trim was failing due to Denver's extreme temperature changes. The frequent freeze-thaw cycles were breaking down the stone and its adherence to the rhyolite structure, so a massive effort began in June 2002 to restore the church's stonework.

The $1.84 million project was led by White Construction Group of Castle Rock with Longmont's A.P. Eberlein Co. serving as the masonry subcontractor and Pine's Stone Co. in Glenwood Springs handling the stone cutting and carving.

The architect was the Florin Group - now Bahr Vermeer & Haecker Architects - of Colorado Springs.

Because the original scope of the project was completed significantly under budget, the church was able to afford badly needed additional work - including more stone repair, new sidewalks and repair of the steeple cross.

The work - which shut down each winter - was completed last November.

"It's been a long time coming," said Chris Haugen, senior estimator and project manager for White Construction. "They have church meeting minutes from as early as 1910 where they mentioned they needed to take care of the stone."

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Stone Replacement

The exterior renovation of the church involved replacing the original sandstone with a denser, less absorbent sandstone better able to withstand Colorado's rapidly changing weather.

The new sandstone was quarried in Pennsylvania and trucked to Kansas, where it was cut into more manageable slabs. Afterward, it was shipped to Glenwood Springs for carving and then to Denver for installation.

Masonry experts worked with massive, intricately dimensioned and carved stones, some weighing as much as 1,000 lbs a piece. The existing crumbling stone was removed, new sandstone was installed and secured with epoxy and stainless steel anchors, then repointed.

"All the sandstone trim was failing, so it was thoroughly gone over and we decided which pieces needed to be replaced," Haugen said. "There were some that needed to be replaced and some could just be cleaned."

Most of the damage was visible to the naked eye, but architect Bill Barnes painstakingly surveyed the exterior with a telephoto lens in order to document every square inch of the building.

In the end, about 80 percent of the sandstone trim was replaced.

"We had planned to replace failing sandstone with limestone, but they weren't able to find a limestone with the right color," Haugen said. "But the sandstone they used is is extremely dense with extremely tight grains so the water will just bead up on it."

"It's nice that they spent the time to do the research to get a stone that will last a while," said White Construction Group President Tim White.

All Buffed Up

Finally, the entire building was also cleaned, revealing the pink, buff and lavender stone.

"It was kind of a dingy, yellowish brown and now it's a gorgeous purple," he said.

The work was challenging, though, because of the busy intersection at which the church is located, White said. Pedestrian and vehicle traffic was intense and some of the stonework was as high as 189 ft above street level, requiring forklifts, elevators and both conventional and mobile scaffolding.

White said he was drawn to the project because of its historic nature. "We have a particular affinity for projects that allow us to preserve history, and this project provided the whole project team a challenge that made the work tremendously interesting," he said. "The exciting thing about doing historical work is it's not only construction, which is the business we're in, but there's that added dimension of knowing you're doing work where there's history, a story, research to be done."

And, sometimes, there are mysteries to be revealed such as the one at the top of the cross on the church's steeple.

"We set a big crane in the parking lot, sent two men in basket to repair copper cross, and they found two bullet holes," Haugen said. "There are skyscrapers now in the general line of fire so they had to have happened a long time ago. They're a mystery that will probably never been solved."

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