Abbot repairs and restores brick and concrete Mission Hill building

66 Louis Prang Street - Boston

Boston, MA Abbot Building Restoration Co. completed a major repair and restoration of a brick and poured reinforced concrete building owned by Wentworth Institute of Technology in the Mission Hill section of the city. The building, 66 Louis Prang St., was formerly an old bus garage adjacent to Wentworth property that the owner purchased and was originally using for storage of excess miscellaneous equipment.

In 2015, the owner decided to renovate exterior of the structure (and eventually the interior) with the goal to move the school’s facilities department into the building. After a competitive bidding process, the owner, acting at its own consultant, awarded the exterior masonry contract to Abbot.

Abbot’s evaluated the building and identified the following major deficiencies:

• The brick masonry was extremely dirty

• The window were sills deteriorated and in some cases non-existent

• Brick above the windows to the roof had deflected and was no longer in plane with walls

• The windows were non-existent and filled with concrete block

One of the most significant repairs involved the removal of the concrete blocks that had been installed to secure the building from vandalism. When it was decided to turn the building to usable space, all of the blocks would have to be removed and new windows installed to provide ample light emission into the space.

Abbot also recommended that the brick veneer be removed from the top of the windows to the roof line, and would resource and install new brick to match the color of the rest of the exterior brick.

Based upon this comprehensive evaluation, Abbot performed the following sequence of repairs:

• All brick was power washed with a restoration cleaner to remove existing dirt, and paint was removed from bottom of perimeter of building to provide for a natural brick appearance

• All brick joints were repointed

• All of the bricks were removed from the top of the windows to the roof line, and entirely rebuilt using new matching brick

• The concrete blocks were removed from all windows

• New pre-cast concrete window sills were fabricated and installed to replace deteriorated and non-existent sills,

• New key stones were installed in the parapet corners to decorate the walls

• New energy efficient windows with security screens were installed

• The foundation and balance of the existing poured concrete was coated with an elastomeric material to improve the building’s appearance

• Finally, a new precast front sign was fabricated to match the original sign.