SALVAGED pine from a historic American cotton mill is being used in the £80 million restoration of the Mackintosh Building at Glasgow School of Art.
The original construction of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece included American yellow pine shipped in from Massachusetts.
Now wood from the same area and around the same age has been reshaped into columns to rebuild the Japanese-inspired Studio 58, which was destroyed in a major fire three years ago.
The wood was taken from a section of the Picker Building in Lowell, Massachusetts, which was built around the same time as the Mackintosh Building, when it was demolished to make way for flats.
Longleaf Lumber reclaimed southern yellow pine from the mill just as the Mackintosh Building restoration team in Glasgow was searching for high quality timber to replace the upright columns in Studio 58.
Liz Davidson, senior project manager for the Mackintosh Restoration, said: “Studio 58 is one of the special spaces in the Mackintosh Building. The original wooden uprights had been made out of American yellow pine, which we knew had come from Massachusetts.
“So when our contractor, Kier Construction, began the search for replacement timber, they looked into possible sources in the area where the original timber had come from at the turn of the 20th century.
“We were delighted to discover that not only did Longleaf Lumber have the quality yellow pine in the size we needed, but it had come from a building constructed at the same time as the Mack.”
A spokesman from Longleaf Lumber said: “We are excited and humbled to be part of such a tremendous restoration project.
“It is fitting that these beams, cut from the grand longleaf pine forests and originally milled for a factory in the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, have been reclaimed and repurposed in a restoration effort that pays homage to an architectural master.”
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