Masonry Magazine April 1984 Page. 17
REFLECTIONS
On the Past, Present and
Future of the Masonry Industry and Trades
By PAUL LENCHUK
One of the finest contributions we can offer to the construction industry is the craftsmanship of the mason. I have toured the world, looking at ancient buildings in the Middle East, examined the cathedrals of northern Europe, been wonderstruck by the Great Wall of China, and searched through the remains of the civilizations of southern Europe and the Americas. I stand in awe of the work done by the mason. Jobs of this magnitude obviously were bid and managed by mason contractors. Nothing done today by non-masons can equal it in steel, glass, wood, metal, and the various preshaped concretes. It is a legacy that we carry, inherited through the labors and know-how of the past 5,000 years.
While that system of getting these marvels built has changed to accommodate modern methods, the organization of getting the wall built at the job site is essentially the same. There are still the people who make the product and deliver it to the job site. Five thousand years ago it was the stone and marble industry. The quarry was the factory site and the mason both shaped the product and put it in place. Mason contractors organized the needed skills, the job site equipment, and supervised the construction.
While there are still stone and marble quarries, it is the highly automated brick or block plant which is the factory today. It delivers its products to the job site and the mason contractor still organizes the needed skills, the job site equipment, and supervises the construction. However, because the building of the 20th century has become so complicated, the mason contractor today serves the general contractor, whereas he was the master of the job centuries ago. But the mason still uses his trowel and his skill as he did 50 centuries ago. The trowel may be somewhat different, but the skill is the same.
Why is this system, which has worked so well for the past 50 centuries and has built the wonders of the world.
About the Author
Paul Lenchuck is president of the National Concrete Masonry Association headquartered in Herndon, Virginia. His comments have been adapted from his presentation at the Opening Session of the 34th MCAA International Masonry Conference in New Orleans, La., January 30, 1984.
under such attack and losing market share today in the United States and Canada? My opinion is that North America has been building disposable buildings from the time Western civilization established itself here. Unlike other civilizations, North America tears down its buildings after 50 years of use and develops its building sites for more advanced structures with the new technologies built into them.
No one expects buildings in the U.S. and Canada to last several hundred years, and they become a burden if they do. Even with the craze for preservation, we keep only the facade of the structure, tear out the guts, and start all over again. Therefore, there is no appeal to build for the ages. The disposable building is built fast and cheap. That's why the lightweight building of metal and glass is taking market share away from masonry building. But that's also why so many buildings look like they came out of cookie cutters. They absolutely dull the mind and bring despair to the soul. The world community of designers has already responded to this monotony by declaring the new age of Post-Modernism. To make buildings look different, the arches, palladian windows, recesses and "human" scale details of the past are being incorporated into the structures of the 1980's.
Copycat Designs with Competing Materials
This bodes well for the masonry industry and the trades, but metal, glass, wood, and preformed concrete are copying this trend, even though it looks artificial when their materials are used. Only a masonry building looks natural when it employs these age-old techniques of ornamentation. So why are we losing market share to these copycats?
That's not an easy question to answer. I said that the disposable building has to be built fast and cheap. Apparently the masonry building is not perceived to be fast and cheap to build. I say "perceived" because when the mason contractor is given a chance to bid against these imitations and he organizes his masons to beat the competition, he usually can do so.
I think one reason "perception" plays such a large role in not choosing masonry construction is that the great benefit of putting up a building by hand and giving it the beauty which only hand labor can bestow upon it is looked upon as being too slow and too expensive. It is compared to the industrialized methods of large panels, erected by cranes, where job site labor is kept to a minimum. No one believes hand labor can better this type of construction. Job site labor is also looked upon as sloppy and unreliable, and the mason is slandered by this outlook, even though he has a record of performance of thousands of years.
So the whole masonry industry and all its craftsmen and contracting trades have an image problem. Because job-