Concrete Meets History

There are only a handful of buildings in the United States that rival the Virginia State Capitol for historical prominence.

Thomas Jefferson designed the original structure, modeled after an ancient Roman temple. With construction beginning in 1785, the building has housed Virginia’s legislature since 1788, except for a four-year stint during the Civil War when the Virginia State Capitol served as the seat of government for the Confederate States of America. It is currently the nation’s second-oldest working capitol.

After more than two centuries’ worth of wear and tear, the state of Virginia recognized the need to renovate, update and preserve this historic building. In 2004, the Virginia State Capitol Restoration and Extension Project began as an effort to turn around years of water damage, termite infestation and general aging. The project also includes updates on water and sewer utilities, electrical systems, telecommunication wiring, heating and cooling and making the building fully handicap accessible. A new underground extension off the south portico will house a visitor’s center and a security entrance to the building.

The concrete work

Cleveland Cement Contractors of Cleveland and Richmond, Va., working for the Gilbane/Christman joint venture, is carrying out the needed concrete work for the project, inside and outside. It includes pouring new floor slabs inside the building, restructuring concrete on the existing roof and walls, installing elevator shafts, building a new mechanical tunnel, repairing the concrete work in an existing mechanical tunnel and building the underground extension. Cleveland Cement began work on the project in early 2005 and will be finished by the end of the year.

“It’s not a large concrete project; it’s just an expensive concrete project because of logistics,” says Steve Murphy, vice president at Cleveland Cement. “There’s very little access, and it’s a very tight site.”

Clay Haselden, senior project manager with Cleveland Cement, explains that the building had to remain fully functional and was occupied by the Virginia General Assembly and other Capitol tenants while much of the outside construction was taking place.

“The skin was being removed from one end of the building and we were digging a tunnel on the other end while people were still working inside,” Haselden says. “When the governor had a meeting we had to quit digging holes or stop running heavy equipment outside his window.”

The majority of Cleveland Cement’s exterior work was on the visitor center and security entrance extension. The Capitol’s south portico was shored and underpinned with jet-grouted columns and a 60-ft. deep slurry wall. Then the site was shored and excavated from 30 ft. at the existing building and tapered down toward the street. The hillside extension eventually will be covered by dirt and the new entrance will open up at street level.

“Because it’s underground, there is an extensive waterproofing system,” Murphy says. “This site was pretty dry because it was just an open cut to an existing street, so the water all drained down toward the street. We encountered very little water problems. But the problems we did run into were with existing utilities — some are 150 years old, like brick sewer lines that you excavate underneath and they collapse. (Replacement of these lines is part of the restoration.) With a lot of these utilities, no one ever knew where anything was. The records that predated the Civil War that would have recorded where utilities were, if there ever were any, are lost.”

Cleveland Cement also built a new concrete mechanical tunnel that ties into the extension, and in an existing concrete mechanical tunnel Cleveland made repairs by sealing exposed rebar with a noncorrosive bonding agent and sealing up the walls.