Building Restoration Corporation

09/04/2026

The Guardian Building, completed in 1892 on Jackson Street in downtown Saint Paul and known for years as the Brooks Building, is Edward Bassford's take on the Richardsonian Romanesque. Four stories of brownstone, arched windows on slender polished columns, and a carved parapet that gives the building its silhouette.

When we started in 2017, much of that parapet was gone, in places eight feet of it. The stone was no longer available, since the quarries that supplied it are closed and sit inside protected parkland. So the roofline was rebuilt from a photograph taken around 1920 from across the street. Carvers cut the profiles into aerated concrete, the carvings became molds, and precast pieces were set around the full perimeter of the roof.

* Crews are shown here at the end of the job, during scaffolding takedown.

09/03/2026

Our craftspeople have been responsible for preserving buildings that define Midwest, for over 40 years. Here’s a sneak peak at where a lot of our work happens.

09/02/2026

The Blair House has stood on the corner of Selby and Western since 1887. For most of its first century it went by other names, first the Albion, then the Angus. When Cathedral Hill fell into decline, the building seemed headed for demolition, but a 1985 renovation brought it back as apartments, offices, and retail, and it has been a neighborhood fixture ever since.

We started exterior masonry restoration this spring, and as the project winds down, we're reminded what a privilege it is to work on buildings with this kind of history.

Water never stops looking for a way in. Our job this year was to keep the Blair weathertight, so the apartments and storefronts stay in use and the corner keeps looking the way Cathedral Hill has always known it.

09/02/2026

BRC is back at the Court International Building in St. Paul.

International Harvester bought the building in 1928 and ran the sale and distribution of tractors, trucks, and equipment out of it into the 1950s. It was converted to offices in the 1980s, and when we first worked on it in 1985 it was still known as the International Harvester Building.

Four decades on, our crews are back on the same walls for masonry and sealant repairs.

08/21/2026

As promised, Here’s our full length interview with Joel Vaughan, our longest tenured employee.

We sat down in the Brickroom and had him reflect on his illustrious career.

Enjoy and don’t forget to subscribe!

We sat down with our longest tenured employee, Joel Vaughan, on his...

08/19/2026

Herman Schroeder came to Shakopee in 1875 and started a brickyard that became the Schroeder Brick and Lime Manufacturing Company. In 1880 he built himself a house on Bluff Avenue out of his own brick, red clay pulled from the banks of the Minnesota River and fired in his own kilns. You can still spot that brick in buildings all over Scott County.

The House and Livery were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2023. The city has owned the property since 2020, and it sits along the riverfront at the heart of Shakopee's Cultural Corridor, a project meant to open the river back up and share the history of the people who built the area.

BRC kicked off exterior masonry work on the Schroeder House and Livery this week. It's a privilege to work on a building this important to its city.

Learn more about our historic restoration work: https://buildingrestoration.com/markets/historic/

08/18/2026

This is how precast stone is made. It is cast in a mold rather than cut from a quarry block, built to the profile of the piece it replaces and finished to match the color and texture of the surrounding masonry.

Its purpose on a historic building is to solve a sourcing problem. Brownstone and other original materials are often no longer available, and when they are, each replacement unit has to be carved by hand to match what is coming out of the wall. That drives cost up fast on a facade with any real quantity of stone. Precast gets an owner the same profile and the same appearance at a cost that keeps a restoration feasible, and it is accepted for use in historic work.

These pieces are custom made for the Blair House, produced at Stoneworks Architectural Precast/Cast Stone . We have worked with their shop on several projects over the years.

08/17/2026

Over four decades in masonry restoration, from a company of a few crews and a handful of trailers, to working on historic buildings standing across the Upper Midwest.

That career spans generations of craftspeople who learned the trade standing next to him. We asked our longest tenured employee, Joel Vaughan, to sit down and take a look back.

Full interview drops Friday on YouTube.

08/13/2026

For as long as Todd Walker can remember, the flagpole at the University Club of St. Paul leaned, and no flag flew from it. His father Lee, a Marine who served in Korea, noticed it every single time.

Lee passed away on May at 93. When Todd and his brother Chris started thinking about how to remember their dad, they landed on the flagpole. Dig it out, pour proper footings, stand it up straight, paint it, run a new rope, and light it after dark. Lee spent his working life as an electrician, so the lighting it up mattered.

Most of the work was done before we ever showed up. Todd needed a lift to finish the painting and the re-roping, and he called us because he could not turn a corner in Cathedral Hill without passing one of our trucks. We were glad to be a small part of it. That is Todd himself at the top of the boom with the rope in his hands, next to Henry Schnitzer, who painted the pole.

The flag goes up Tuesday at noon at the University Club.

Todd will give his horn a little toot every time he drives past now. He asks that you do the same.