The Building is also the Museum
It was an adventure from the first time John Crookston and his assistant, Andy, walked in the door of the Sturgis Historical Museum.
Crookston was a slate expert and he came to gather some facts.
The problem was that while some slate repair was done several years ago, there were still some issues and the gutters were never really fixed.
At board meetings various ideas were tossed around. Removing the slate and putting down a more modern roofing being the most popular. Until Todd Maynard showed up and put a stop to that.
“The building is also the museum,” he said. “Not just what’s inside.”
Who really wants to remove something so authentic as a 130 year-old slate roof? Certainly not the history buffs who make up the board of the Sturgis Historical Society.
So Dan Root, the city facilities director, asked for another bid for slate repair. There aren’t many in the area, but there is John Crookston of Up Right. He is often a subcontractor under Hoekestra Roofing as he was in our case.
So John and Andy came in the door. John is the talker. Andy is not, but they clearly respect each other.
“How old is the roof?” Crookston asked.
I told him what I knew – the depot was built in 1895 and the roof is original to the building.
Crookston didn’t agree. “I know slate backwards, forward and sideways. This is not 130 years old. Do you have photos?”
Now that answer was a yes. Soon John and Andy were peering at the wide variety of original photos of this building. They started talking to each other in contractor lingo but soon I began to understand that they agreed. It seemed to be original.
The one thing Andy did say was, “It’s in the best shape I’ve seen for a 130 slate roof.”
So Crookston along with a Hoekestra guy came to a board meeting. The board agreed. He might have been initially wrong about the age of the slate but Crookston did know slate backward, forwards and sideways. His proposal was to remove two feet of slate at the eves, because that’s where they typically find problems. And around openings such as the dormer on the west and the chimney.
The board accepted his bid and what an interesting spring I had. The scaffolding went up. I went up too. I love construction. Crookston would stop in and tell me what they were finding. Andy and the other two would answer any questions. I took everyone who wanted to climb the scaffolding to show them.
All was rolling right along until they reached the dormer. They found that water had made its way in over the decades and the dormer had begun to pull away. The wood was wet and rotting, bricks were loose. It needed repair in the worst way.
“This was going on before the move,” Crookston said. “The move probably didn’t help but this has been a problem for a long time.”
They reinforced the rafters, pulling it all back together and called in a team of masons to fix the bricks. They discovered some wood left in the rafters by the original builders that was the exact match for some that needed to be replaced under the overhang.
Then came the day they made the seamless copper gutter. It didn’t take long. John and the team rolled it out, carried it over and installed it. Talk about cool!
Copper doesn’t rust, that’s why they used it in the first place, Crookston said. They replaced it around the dormer, the chimney and anywhere else, the purpose is to always drain the water away from the roof and building.
They wrapped up the job and Crookston and his crew moved on to other bigger projects. What they left is a museum that is a museum – the building as well as the contents. An iconic building that can continue to serve that person for many more decades.
We were able to do this project because of the Sturgis Depot and Freight Depot Preservation fund held at the Sturgis Area Community Foundation. Your donation through the SACF will ensure the longevity of this important resource that helps preserve Sturgis history.
To see the roof project unfold, check out videos on our Facebook page from the spring. You can see what they found and what they did.
