Can You Name This Building? (We roofed it!) Hint: It’s an Atlanta Landmark Built In 1887

The roof is slate, the gutters and downspouts are copper and the building is in use by members most days and times. This is not your average commercial roof.

Standing on the ground, you can see that the roof design is beautiful and complex. The slate that needed replacing had to be meticulously matched and sourced, and since it was originally built by artisans, it was built with intricate slopes and angles. This required compound miters on single pieces of slate and cuts made on a changing angle instead of a straight line. Some of the hips (places where two intersecting planes come together) are curved, adding another piece to the cutting-solution puzzle. Did we just place the pieces of slate up against each other and cap the intersection? No way! That would not have maintained the integrity or beauty of the original design.

Did you guess the building? It’s…

Piedmont Driving Club

The historic 128-year-old club building sits on the edge of Piedmont Park, which used to be Driving Club property. Its 100-year-old, lead-coated copper gutters and downspouts are prominent all around the building and were an important part of the re-roofing job as well. A lot of the copper was still in good shape so we took it down, cleaned it, painted it and reinstalled it. For the pieces that couldn’t be salvaged, our experts fabricated replicas by hand, using materials we sourced that matched the originals.

Craftsmanship, flexibility and small crews

This work and the slate work had to be done while club members were enjoying themselves at the facilities and for special events. Sentry is accustomed to working around a client’s requirements but this was more extreme than usual — not a problem, though. We used a highly flexible, tactical approach by breaking the job down into smaller parts and using smaller teams. We’re proud to have been brought onto this project from New South Construction in 2008 and 2009 and to have continued to work with Piedmont Driving Club on other projects after the major work was completed.