Case Study
The Willow School of Gladstone, NJ
A Reclaimed Lumber Company made it possible for The Willow School of Gladstone, New Jersey, to make reclaimed lumber a beautiful, practical, and cost-effective focal point of their new educational buildings.
The Willow School, an independent coeducational day school for students in kindergarten through eighth grade, commits itself to combining academic excellence with the joy of learning. Part of that "joy," school trustees concluded, should come from healthy, responsible spaces in which its students learn. When the School learned of ARLC's ability to bring reclaimed wood efficiently and cost-effectively into complicated building projects, they took advantage of the opportunity.
ARLC's work was definitely not easy. It had to find over 100,000 board feet of lumber in several different species and sizes from demolished factories, recycling centers, and under other highly unusual sources in the East and Midwest. And it had to meet tough timelines: the project required ARLC to meet many short incremental deadlines during the 12 month course of the project's construction to meet an ambitious move-in date. ARLC met each challenge and helped make this highly innovative and exceptionally responsible building project become a reality.
ARLC provided The Willow School with six major reclaimed products:
Summer Beams
Heart pine summer beams were the project's most visible feature. We made them from beams that came from, among other sources, the dismantled Faife Cotton Mill (c. 1880) in Rockingham, NC. In total, we provided over 50,000 board feet of finished beams. The largest of the beams was 13" x 17" x 25'.
Light Posts
In one of the project's most innovative reclaimed wood uses, we found discarded red cedar telephone poles on Cape Cod and transformed them into light posts for the campus.
Sidewalk Stones
Because there is much more than wood in any project, ARLC often procures reclaimed items outside of the forest products sector. Here, we found several truckloads of blue stone, originally the floors of the Charles Street Prison in Boston. These stones became the walkway to a main entrance of one of the school buildings.
Window Sill Plates
For all of the project's window sills, we used douglas fir from pickle aging tanks that came from the Bick's Pickle Company near Toronto.
Ceiling Panels and Flooring
Using remanufactured cypress and pine from damaged North Carolina marine pilings, we manufactured cypress acoustical-style ceiling panels and durable pine flooring for the classrooms.
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