Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto Restoration

Restoration work began this week on the Lourdes Grotto at Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery. 

Click the video link to hear Marion Restoration owner Mario Machnicki explain the scope of the project, as well as his research on the source of the stones that were used to build it 100 years ago.

Good morning. My name is Mario Machnicki. I'm the owner and founder of Marion Restoration. I started this company in 1980, so we've been in business for quite a long time. We have been retained by Peter and Paul Cemetery to restore this beautiful grotto here, and the scope of this restoration will include cleaning of the stone, repairing some of the damages that were caused by movement, some structural movement, and some issues with embedded steel elements supporting arches, for example, and wing walls on both sides, on the East and West sides, that have been repaired before.

So there is mortar that you can see on the surface. It's kind of intrusive. We'd like to remove that as well. We will be making mortar to match the original because it's a 100-year-old structure, so we will be finding materials that the mortar is made of not commonly use these days. So it looks like we'll be, you know, we're going to take the sample apart, we're going to identify the type of aggregate that was used back then.

We'll also identify the binder, which is the element that holds the aggregate together, and we will duplicate to be exact. So when we repair this, we'll have a light repair of original material. There is a portion of the grotto that has missing stone. So I'm holding a piece of stone in my hands right now, which I have shown to a quarry nearby.

It's a quarry in Lemont, Bromberek Flagstone quarry, because I was under the impression that he might know where this came from. He has been in business for at least 100-some years because it's a business that he took over from his father and grandfather, so they are familiar with the stone rock formations in this region of the country.

And he was able to identify this as a stone that comes from Kentucky and he told me that the quarry just closed down four years ago, and that it was quite popular material for landscaping. Unfortunately, it's no longer available, but he has some possible way to get enough material to install on the dome of the south portion of the grotto.

As I was passing by, I drove by Villa St. Benedict, the monastery, and I looked at the grotto that's there. And I also found a similar stone on the grotto and an information plaque that says that the grotto was built in 1928 and the stone came from the grounds of the monastery. So most likely this stone was quite local in this region, and that it could be somewhere in the range of 1 mile, or 10 or 20 miles.

We will still investigate; we have plenty of things to do right now. So we're starting today with cleaning. We're using hot water and mild detergents, not acidic detergents, because the stone contains lyme, which is a highly alcaline material and it reacts with acid. So we have non-acidic detergents that we apply first and then we use low-pressure hot water on the surface of the stone. And we're making a sample right now; it looks like the stone is nicely drying at this point.

And we're seeing beautiful, bright colors that are now visible on the surface.