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Process photo showing stained stone
at left and a cleaned area at right.

Restored East Capitol Street façade of the Folger Shakespeare Library,
with the Capitol Dome in the distance.

Chapter Design Award in in Paris. The building was dedicated in 1932 and the design of
Historic Resources & Preservation the white marble exterior, while classical in spirit, simplifies
Folger Shakespeare Library and abstracts many of classical architecture’s most distinctive
Washington, DC features. “Modernized classicism” is the term frequently used to
describe the building’s exterior, which became a prototype for a
MTFA Design + Preservation wide range of public buildings and monuments across America.
The building material is soft Georgia marble—the same
Structural Engineer: Robert Silman Associates marble used for Lincoln’s statue on the National Mall and for
General Contractor: Dan Lepore & Sons Company the Federal Reserve Building. Soft means absorbent, and the
marble—particularly on the upper third of the library—had
“Shakespeare is our middle name. We may not be able to become extensively stained over time by rainwater dripping
immortalize ourselves in poetry as Shakespeare did, but we can from the copper flashing below the parapet. The task of
preserve the treasures we are fortunate enough to possess…,” removing the stains and conserving the integrity of the façade
wrote Michael Whitmore, director of the Folger Shakespeare and its beloved bas reliefs depicting nine Shakespearean scenes
Library, in a 2018 issue of Folger Magazine on the painstaking fell to Amanda Edwards, architectural conservator at MTFA
conservation and cleaning of the revered national landmark Design + Preservation.
building that was about to get under way. Through a meticulous trial-and-error process in the lab and
Located on East Capitol Street within a stone’s throw of the then on site, Edwards and her team devised a unique regimen of
U.S. Capitol Building, the library was designed by Paul Philippe misting, microabrasion, and applications of a cleaning poultice.
Cret, a French émigré who trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition
14 BASTIONS OF CULTURE