Fixing walls, helping their college

Of all the trades taught by the American College of the Building Arts, none may be quite as endangered as plasterer.

While new construction today often makes use of masons, timber framers, carpenters and even stone cutters, it's rare to find new plaster walls.

That's why some can take heart this summer as three young female plaster students spend their time repairing several walls inside Charleston's Old City Jail.

They're known around the college as "The Plaster Ladies," or "The Trowlettes."

Bethany Costilow of Cleveland is leading the three-person team, and she is passionate about why plaster is superior to sheetrock.

She notes plaster is superior because it's more organic — a simple mix of lime and sand — instead of the reconstituted gypsum and chemical-treated paper found in sheetrock.

She also explains that a plaster wall can last up to 500 years, compared with 50 at best for drywall. It also provides better sound insulation and is more able to resist mold. And it holds and releases moisture better, which can keep houses cooler in the heat and warmer in the cold.

"I think people will soon realize that modern building methods aren't an improvement," Costilow says. "People will look back and see that they had it right, and we've kind of strayed from the path."

Costilow is being helped by two rising sophomores, Beverly Wiltberger of Greenville and Emily Gillett of Charlotte, as they identify the cracks and holes and other sections that need work. "Our goal is to keep as much of the historic plaster as possible," Costilow says.

Their careful inspection of the walls has revealed signatures, math scribblings and sections where prisoners apparently marked their days with small nicks.

And their work is helping to solve a conundrum the college has faced for years. In 2004, the school won a $500,000 Save America's Treasures grant — the highest amount ever awarded — to restore the Old City Jail.

But it needed to raise a matching amount before it could spend the money.

And that had proved a difficult task because the fledgling college also needed to focus intensely on its fund-raising efforts to keep its professors paid and its doors open. It still is striving to earn national accreditation, which will help its students qualify for federal loans and will balloon its enrollment to a point where it can operate in the black. Tackling a costly capital project on a 19th century jail building ranked far down the list.

President Colby Broadwater says the students' work, along with other in-kind donations, has helped the college spend the grant and fix up a new home for itself in the jail — a home that became more important after the college jettisoned more costly plans to use McLeod Plantation on James Island.

"This is a piece of the school helping itself this summer," Broadwater says. Other students are helping fix the jail's masonry or replace its gates along Magazine Street. "It's going to take a while, but you can see there's a whole lot of work that's been done."

The jail has been closed for 65 years and hadn't seen much work in 75 years, Broadwater said. When he arrived a year ago, the college wasn't using any of the jail.

When the college reconvenes this fall, it will be using about half, including four classrooms, administrative spaces, a drawing lab and room for stone and masonry programs.

The college is far from out of the woods, financially speaking, but it's demonstrating anew to its home city the value of the skills it teaches.

Robert Behre may be reached at 937-5771 or by fax at 937-5579. His e-mail address is rbehre@postandcourier.com, and his mailing address is 134 Columbus St., Charleston, SC 29403.