SALEM FOUNDATION REPAIRS

Salem one of New Englands famous coastal cities founded in 1626. With continuous settlement by Europeans in the 1600's English colonist began crafting colonial homes and buildings. It was native tradition, English or Dutch, which early Salem craftsmen brought to Massachusetts. Plan, elevation and framing ; windows, doors, brick work, stone work and interior finish were all in European tradition and transplanted to early homes and construction.     

While early constructed Salem homes where mostly one room lean to's what they called in New England at least, soon "upright house" construction appeared as early as 1675-1700's. An example being the Sargent House in Boston dated to 1677.  First period homes and all Salem construction used stone and brick throughout the homes and buildings. 

Lime and sand were the materials used to bond these historic homes in masonry construction prior to the early 1900's. Thats almost three hundred years of construction with lime mortar, stone and brick.   Salem currently has about 18 still standing first period homes built from 1625-1725 and roughly 350 first period homes still standing in Essex County.   

 It has been with great privilege to work on Early Salem homes for three generations. It was in fact working with our Grandfather on Derby St. in Salem restoring foundations as a young child which sparked our interest in old homes and family masonry tradition. 

Since the 1960's our family has continuously worked in Salem masonry and foundation restoration business. We service all stone and brick foundations from 1600's, 1700's, 1800's, 1900's to even early block and concrete construction. 

 Today our company has the luxury of three generations of foundation restoration experience. From a young age we were taught to mix lime sand and cement. How to render lime white washing and plastering. Laboring for our Grandfather, father and uncles we learned first hand the use of masonry materials, stone, brick and the preparations of stone foundations prior to repairing them.    

Eventually moving from laborer to tenderer then to mason all while working locally gaining knowledge of native materials and building practices. Being extensively trained in masonry there was no guess work or desperate assumptions on peoples properties. All our work was and is installed with years of experience behind it.     

Thompson Crowley Masonry has restored 1000's of foundations many in Salem. We have three hundred plus different examples on our facebook link. 

Thats three hundred different properties not just pictures and we've only recently started keeping track of the work examples.