Profile
Moreland Courts Condominiums
It’s upscale as it is historic.
Moreland Courts luxury condominiums feature swanky amenities like complimentary valet parking, and conference-calling capability in every suite.
Cleveland architect Alfred W. Harris designed the luxury building apartment complex in 1922 with the stated intention of writing
“the entire history of English architecture” on the
exterior. The result was a campus of 13 six-to-eight-story masonry
buildings lavishly decorated with details from the late Gothic and Tudor to the Jacobean and Georgian.*
As the decades passed, many of Cleveland’s leading
citizens made their homes in the 147 six-to-nine-room
apartments at Moreland Courts. The complex went condo in 1979.
Though always a desirable address, age and deferred maintenance took a toll on the elegant complex. In
2005, after years of planning, the Moreland Courts Condo
Association undertook a $12 million effort to restore and update the building for the 21st century.
M-A Building & Maintenance Company, Cleveland, got the job of cleaning and repairing the red brick,
sandstone and limestone exterior. It would be the building’s
first cleaning since Moreland Courts opened its doors in
1929.
“There was a lot of black,” commented Pete Wamelink, M-A Building & Maintenance Company’s president and project manager. Moreland Courts lived through the heyday of Cleveland’s steel mills, he explained. It
had the carbon stains to prove it.
Knocking it off took one of the most powerful
products in PROSOCO’s arsenal – Sure Klean® Heavy Duty Restoration Cleaner NE. The “NE” stands for
Northeast.
PROSOCO created this cleaner specifically to break
the grip of the heaviest atmospheric soiling the big
Northeastern industrial cities offered.
The M-A Building & Maintenance Company crews went after the soiling two buildings at a time
starting in March 2005.
Their procedure began by thoroughly wetting down 20 by 20 square-foot areas of masonry. This
“pre-wetting” keeps the cleaner on the surface, where it attacks
the contaminants.
Next, the crews hit the dark, wetted film with Heavy Duty Restoration Cleaner NE from airless
sprayers.
They let the cleaner chew up the contaminants 5 -10
minutes, based on severity of stains and tests conducted
before the cleaning began, Mr. Wamelink said.
Then the crews pressure-washed away the spent
cleaner and solubulized soiling, leaving – in most areas –
pristine brick. Some parts of the wall were so profoundly stained
that it took up to three applications of the powerful
cleaner.
Behind the cleaners came the tuckpointers. Beneath the soiling, bricks had weathered and many mortar
joints had failed, letting water into the walls. By
project’s end the M-A crews had tuckpointed 100,000 square feet of masonry, and replaced 90,000 bricks.
The onset of wintry weather in November brought the exterior work to a temporary halt with six
buildings cleaned and repaired. The crews returned in March
2006 and started again.
Though the brick soiling was tough to remove, stains on Moreland Courts’ limestone and sandstone trim,
sills, quoins, entryways and other natural stone details
was even more entrenched.
Since the limestone was too sensitive for the
aggressive Heavy Duty Restoration Cleaner NE, Mr. Wamelink
turned to Sure Klean®
766 Limestone &
Masonry Prewash, followed by Sure Klean®
Limestone &
Masonry Afterwash.
Applications of the alkaline 766 debonded most of
the stains built up on the stone surface. Follow-up
cleaning with mildly acidic Limestone & Masonry Afterwash neutralized any lingering alkalinity, and added a
further cleaning/brightening effect. Though about 10 percent
of the staining had penetrated deeply over the decades
and couldn’t be reached, the difference in the stone,
was, Mr. Wamelink said, “night and day.”
Overall, the difference added up to gold – the
company’s work on Moreland Courts garnered an International Masonry
Institute 2006 Golden Trowel Award, as well
as awards from the Builders Exchange of Cleveland and
The Cleveland Restoration Society.
* The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
http://ech.case.edu
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