Vol. 38, No. 18

1-23-2008
By: Julia Harris

Building on perfection

The great-grandson of the original plasterer is on the job in the library’s Grand Reference Room

On a bitterly cold January day, there’s not a lot that could be called “grand” about the Grand Reference Room in the Thompson Library. With its scarred greenish walls, cracked plaster pilasters and gaping holes, the dusty cavern brings to mind archeological ruins rather than a sedate scholarly retreat.

To the layman, the place looks beyond repair.

But to Seth Pymer, president of Pymer Plastering Inc., it looks just about right.

Most of the damage to the decorative plasterwork, put in more than a century ago by his great-grandfather, can be restored, albeit rather painstakingly.

“What daunts me is the damage that was done during the demolition of that second floor,” says Pymer, chewing hard on a piece of gum as he walks around the giant space. He points out a crack that runs jaggedly along one end wall, racing up and down and through an array of structural elements.

“This wall and the one on the other end of the room kind of settled during the demolition, sending cracks throughout the structure, and I don’t know yet what it’s going to take to fix it. In my opinion, some of this wall might actually be held up by our plaster.”

The proprietary way in which he says “our plaster” speaks volumes of what makes Pymer the most qualified man in Columbus to fix this mess. The great-grandson and namesake of the Seth Pymer who founded the business back in 1886, Pymer is the last in a long line of Pymers to make their livings out of plaster. He takes great pride in his work and in the legacy of skill he carries forward from previous generations.

“The beauty of plastering is that if you do a good job on a building, that’s your legacy for your family down the road,” Pymer says.

“My grandfather and my dad would take us out on the job when we were young and show us work they’d done and would instill pride in us by doing that.”

As a boy, Pymer says, he’d spend summers on site with his father, carrying buckets of plaster and wheeling barrows full of mud. When he was older, he initially decided he didn’t want to carry on the trade and for about 10 years he taught school instead.

When his grandfather passed away, Pymer says, he came to his senses.

“My dad needed help,” he says, shrugging. “And plastering’s in my blood.”

The plaster seems to have stayed out of his daughter’s blood, however, and she is more than content to be an occupational therapist at Children’s Hospital. Pymer says she knows enough about the business to know it’s not what she wants, and though she sometimes tours important sites — like this one — with him, she’s not picking up the reins when he retires, which he insists doesn’t bother him all that much.

“We’re unusual in that this family business has lasted this long,” he says. “Not to say it’s not going to be carried on, but it won’t be anybody in my family.”

For now, Pymer has been actively restoring grand landmarks around Columbus, from the downtown theaters to the Saint Joseph Cathedral to the Seneca Hotel at Grant and Broad Streets. He says it’s not at all uncommon to find himself working on sites his grandfather or even great-grandfather had first claimed; in fact he’s made a career of walking in his family’s footsteps, maintaining the legacy.

“The Southern Theatre was the first big job my great-grandfather did in Coumbus,” says Pymer, whose company recently finished restorations on the hotel and theatre complex.

“A lot of times, when we get into places like the theatres, we’ll see where the original guys have carved their names into the plaster, or left a memento or a newspaper or something.”

Signing their work in much the same way an artist signs his or her work makes perfect sense to Pymer, who says that the kind of decorative plasterworks he and his crews create is as much artistic as it is practical.

He points to the ornamentation that scrolls across the top of the walls and all the elements that adorn the pilasters that ring the room. Each broken one, he says, will have to be recast into rubber molds that can then be duplicated over and over. Sometimes the original element has to be removed to make the cast and sometimes the crew has to make the mold directly from the element without taking it down.

“We’re basically recreating art,” Pymer says. “A lot of people don’t really understand that.”

That’s why his grandfather’s heart was broken, Pymer says, when the second floor was added to the Grand Reference Room in the 1960s library renovation.

It was with great satisfaction that Pymer and his crew watched that floor come down in March 2007, even though it brought some unanticipated structural damages.

“This is a very special room, not just to me but to the Ohio State University,” Pymer says. “It’s one of those rooms you want to preserve, pristinely, and that’s why you don’t want to cut any corners on repairing it.”

He walks to one of the pilasters his crew is in the process of restoring and runs his hands along one of the squared edges, then squints upward along it to make sure it runs true. “This is something we want to last another 100, 150 years or more.”

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