Stone Veneer

A Maverick's Home:
The New American Castle

In every industry, there are mavericks who go their own way, often very successfully. Kim Baker, a racecar driver, performance engineer and exotic car dealer, has decided "mansion" isn't a good enough term for his future living quarters. Instead, he is building the New American Castle in Middlefield, Mass.

Baker and his wife Patricia developed a love for castle architecture while touring with the racing crowd and have imported the concept to the States. As a public relations professional, Patricia knows the value of branding and has enlisted literally hundreds of companies with well-known brand names into the project. Their web site (www.newamericancastle.com) shows the power of the idea, both the castle — renderings and progress reports abound — and the cooperation concept. Every vendor involved is named, many in individual releases.

Of interest to Masonry readers is the use of products from Cultured Stone of Napa, Calif., throughout for the elegant stone look typical of English and European castles. According to Kim Baker, "We like the Owens-Corning Cultured Stone for three reasons: it's easy to put up, it is less expensive to put up, and it's lighter in weight. In effect, it is a thin, light-weight material so it makes the super structure easier to manage."

Bob Heath, marketing vice president for Cultured Stone, comments, "They're using a product we have as part of our standard product line. We have a broad variety of textures, shapes and colors so usually what anyone can think of we've got something that's either right on or pretty close to it."

The castle has a concrete foundation with stone liners to look like traditional stone. The rest of the construction is structural steel, from AJK Engineering. Over that they are using sheathing and Cultured Stone products on the exterior.

Stone, real and manufactured, will also be used in the interior, especially on the fireplaces in the Great Room and elsewhere. According to Baker, "The stonework on the fireplace is being made by Millstone down in Amarillo, Texas, right now. They're also making the gargoyles for the outside, trim for the inside, and things like lions and books for the library. They're doing quite a few architectural details out of cast stone."

When asked who will do the masonry, Baker responded, "Right now (September 2003), we have several mason contractors in evaluation. We're working with a couple of groups; contractors that install Culture Stone, and we're also talking to the International Masonry Institute, to see if they have a school that may want to participate in the project."

He adds, "We'll have it enclosed and weather tight over the winter and in the spring we'll still be working on the inside because there's a lot of really exacting and complicated decorative items in there. In the spring we'll put up all the Cultured Stone."

Is this a fad, one man's idea of the future or a new market? Heath says, "There is a definite trend toward medieval-type construction. A lot of the Ôin' designs right now are the Tuscan look, Provincial look, and all those architectural styles that can be grouped under Mediterranean architecture. There is resurgence to that kind of construction, both in residential and commercial."