729 South 2nd Street
San Jose, California
After the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake the owners of this building came to work to find that the ornamentation on the front of the building had cracked, broken and in some cases fallen off.
Upon further inspection they found that the building was a wood structure and that the original plaster ornamentation was simply nailed onto the wood structure and adhered with a bit of stucco. The front of the building needed to be completely restored.
After taking field molds of the pieces, Michael H. Casey Designs brought the pieces back to their studio and made a mock up of the actual design in order to reproduce it. A mold was made and the pieces were cast for installation on the building.
The pieces that you see are discolored due to the rain in the photograph, but are made of GFRC (Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete) backed with a steel frame.
The building began its life (sometime in the 1920’s) as the Cambiano Lighting Studio. The Cambiano studio made elaborate wrought iron lighting fixtures in the Spanish Colonial Style for the many churches and mansions of the south bay that incorporated that classic “California” look into their architecture.
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The driving force behind the complete renovation, both inside and out was A.J. Moore and Associates.