2008 Woodie Awards
Plasterer's great-grandson updates OSU library
By: The Columbus Dispatch
Issue date: 3/11/08 Section: Campus
COLUMBUS - Four generations ago, when Ohio State University's main library was being built, plasterer Seth Lincoln Pymer gave the building's most spectacular room its pizazz.
Now, 95 years later, Seth Edward Pymer is revitalizing that pizazz inch by inch as he retraces his great-grandfather's work and restores the Grand Reference Hall's majesty. While most of the William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library is being rebuilt to reflect 21st-century design, the Reference Hall will look the way it did when the Italian Renaissance Revival building opened in 1913.
When the four-year, $100 million renovation is complete, the hall's ceiling will once again stretch to 2 1/2 stories, bookcases will line the walls, long tables and hard-backed chairs will furnish the room, and ornate plasterwork will give it grace and style.
That's where Pymer comes in. He heads one of a handful of plaster companies left in Columbus that specialize in decorative work, adding swirls and whirls to buildings throughout central Ohio. It's a dying trade.
In the Reference Hall, much of the decorative plaster on or near the ceiling was largely intact, including the dentil molding and the entablature - large molding near the ceiling that resembles Legos.
Now, 95 years later, Seth Edward Pymer is revitalizing that pizazz inch by inch as he retraces his great-grandfather's work and restores the Grand Reference Hall's majesty. While most of the William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library is being rebuilt to reflect 21st-century design, the Reference Hall will look the way it did when the Italian Renaissance Revival building opened in 1913.
When the four-year, $100 million renovation is complete, the hall's ceiling will once again stretch to 2 1/2 stories, bookcases will line the walls, long tables and hard-backed chairs will furnish the room, and ornate plasterwork will give it grace and style.
That's where Pymer comes in. He heads one of a handful of plaster companies left in Columbus that specialize in decorative work, adding swirls and whirls to buildings throughout central Ohio. It's a dying trade.
In the Reference Hall, much of the decorative plaster on or near the ceiling was largely intact, including the dentil molding and the entablature - large molding near the ceiling that resembles Legos.
Be the first to comment on this story