A local treasure dating back more than a century, El Bethel Missionary Baptist Church was transformed into a public park after falling victim to an arson attack in 2007. Contractor Epoxy Design Systems repurposed much of the remaining structure as a park pavilion to reflect the original architecture of the church by using Quikrete Shotcrete MS.
Originally built in 1889, El Bethel Missionary Baptist Church served the post-Civil War community of Houston’s Fourth Ward until being replaced with a new sanctuary in 1997. The vacant church burned down in 2007 in a case that remains unsolved today. Several years later, the City of Houston bought the remains with plans to convert the area into a park memorializing the church, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the oldest sanctuaries in Houston.
Epoxy Design Systems removed the unsalvageable elements of the three standing walls, made structural concrete repairs, and reinforced the surface with wire mesh before spray-applying more than 7,000 square feet of Quikrete Shotcrete MS on the adaptive reuse project. In addition to renovating and stabilizing the church, the contractor incorporated relief designs in the walls and returns around columns, doors, and stained glass windows that recaptured the look and spirit of the church.
Today, visitors can sit on attractive brick pews in the symbolic open-air church to enjoy views of the adjacent park.
Quikrete Shotcrete MS is a single-component microsilica-enhanced repair and restoration material that achieves a compressive strength of more than 9,000 psi at 28 days, and features very low rebound and permeability characteristics.Quikrete shotcrete products can be applied through a wet or dry process to deliver the combination of high strength, high adhesion, low rebound, and low sag. These characteristics make the material ideal for rehabilitating bridges, tunnels, parking garages, ramps, piers, dams, and other concrete structures. The manufacturer’s shotcrete has been used on many renovation and restoration projects, including the Pleasure Pier in Texas, Alcatraz Island and Stanford Linear Accelerator in California, and Spokane River in Washington.
For more, visit www.quikrete.com.
