Scaffolding St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, Philadelphia, PA
This one was hard to miss. If you are a regular in the Rittenhouse Square area – or were just passing through, St. Patrick’s Church has been a fixture here since 1839. And when one of Philadelphia’s most prestigious old buildings needed major renovation work – who do you think they called?
Superior Scaffold was proud to have been chosen to provide the scaffolding and access work on this historic landmark. Our decades of experience working with delicate buildings for renovation companies made us the perfect choice when Turner Construction won the contract.
This project involved a ton of moving parts, from scaffolding around lots of intricate areas, getting street closures, adapting to changes and working in a very high traffic area.
If you just walked through Rittenhouse Square and saw this, you’d probably think, “wow, that’s a lot of scaffolding for a renovation but nothing special.” And that’s where you would be wrong.
Scaffolding this intricate and delicate project was a big challenge.
These older structures require a special touch, so everything remains as it was 150 years ago. And that means using every bit of skill and knowledge we have to not to leave a mark of any kind on this historic church.
And you can imagine, erecting scaffolding in and around all of the geometric shapes and areas, like stained glass windows, columns, decorative cornices, roof lines, etc. – was a huge challenge.
And our crew knocked it out of the park.
Our scaffold engulfed three sides of the old church. We used containment wrap around the entire structure to keep debris from slipping out.
Some of the best examples of the detail and care we took erecting thousands of steel and aluminum parts around sensitive materials can be seen in the main entrance around the columns and around the stained glass windows (See the photos).
We had to get close enough for crews to be able to clean and repair everything.
We had a canopy or overhead protection system around the entire perimeter and rectory to protect pedestrians while also allowing the church to remain open for regular service during the entire renovation.
We also had multiple 2000lb material hoists on the South side and a Maxial on the inside.
There were multiple stair towers for access to every floor.
And each level was decked in allowing crews full access to this restoration. We also had shoring in the parking lot for support in the underground utility. We don’t have pics of that but it’s there.
And finally, we had scaffold on the roof area to access those hard to reach places and the beautiful cross at the top.
There are always challenges on a job like this and we worked closely with everyone at Turner to make sure there were as few wrinkles as possible.
For instance, the Rittenhouse Square St. side of the street, where our scaffold runs the entire length of the building, needed the city to shut down a portion of the street. Easy peasy you say? Well, L&I and the Streets department can be quite complicated.
But we worked with Justin at Turner, Jeanien at Streets and our engineer Joh Harlan, submitting drawings, right of way detour plans and changes, to get Streets and L&I what they needed to close off the entire lane on that South side of the church.
In the end, we got crews completely around 3 sides of this massive structure to do the repair and renovation work.
Thanks again to everyone who made this project a success, particularly our crew and Turner Construction, who brought us along for the ride.
Here are some photos of the finished product. She looks fantastic!
And of course, if you need scaffolding, access, or would just like to talk about how the Mother Mary has had an impact on your life, call Anthony today at (215) 743-2200 today or visit www.superiorscaffold.com.
The musical selection comes from our good friends in the Jethro Tull band – Enjoy.
If the link doesn’t work – click this to see the video.
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