Chemistry and Historic Preservation: A Collaborative Research Project on Bricks and Mortar

The blog Between the Cracks details two undergraduate students’ work as researchers partaking in the Summer Science Institute program at the University of Mary Washington. Sarah Smith, majoring in Chemistry, and Chris Young, majoring in Historic Preservation, spent the last 8 weeks of the ten week program researching and testing brick and mortar samples from some of Fredericksburg’s most historic structures. The samples extracted from each building underwent a series of tests to determine the elemental concentrations of calcium, sulfur, iron, silica, and magnesium. With this information, Sarah hopes to link the bricks with kilns used in 18th and 19th century Fredericksburg. Chris aims to scientifically distinguish the different periods of construction at the Mary Washington House, ca. 1772. The re-evaluation of building materials can add to the historic descriptions of the buildings as well as aid in the remediation techniques used in the preservation of historic buildings. The blog … [Read more...]

Historic Buildings of Fredericksburg Website

The Historic Preservation Planning Laboratory of Spring 2010 designed and implemented a website! The Historic Buildings of Fredericksburg database was created in order to provide a central depository of information about buildings in Fredericksburg that had previously been scattered, and make it available to the public at large. The database was created for the Center for Historic Preservation at the University of Mary Washington in the Spring of 2010 by a preservation planning course taught by Smith. The grunt work was done by the students: Chelsea Corcoran, Bill Pieper, Sarah Moore, Megan Hall, Bridget Travers, and Helen Dinndorf. Please check it out, and enjoy! … [Read more...]