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Logan Square Eagle Repaired Thanks, in Part, to Poster Sales

By Darryl Holliday | November 5, 2014 8:55am
  Maybe you’ve noticed a small crew of workers chipping away at The Eagle over the last week.
Eagle Repairs
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LOGAN SQUARE — Logan Square's "neighborhood jewel" is getting an overdue rehab, thanks, in part, to one local preservation society and everyone who bought a limited-edition vintage poster back in September.

The posters sold out in a matter of days, raising more than $10,000 toward repairing the 96-year-old Illinois Centennial monument. Work around the base of The Eagle began last week and continued Tuesday as workers, funded through the Benjamin Ferguson Fund, removed cracked caulk and other loose materials from joints around each stone.

The monument’s joints originally were sealed with a strong layer of “pointing,” but a layer of caulking, an inferior method for creating a watertight seal, was used to rehab the monument in 1994, according to  Andrzej Dajnowski, director of Conservation of Sculpture & Objects Studio, the same company that professionally cleans graffiti from the monument about every other week.

 Proceeds from the September sale of vintage neighborhood posters went toward the repair of the Logan Square Eagle.
Proceeds from the September sale of vintage neighborhood posters went toward the repair of the Logan Square Eagle.
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DNAinfo/Darryl Holliday

The Eagle crew has to finish resealing the joints before rain falls and the temperature drops because water between the massive stones could lead to freezing and quicken deterioration of the monument.

The seal was bad enough already, Dajnowski said.

"The joints were open — it was separating from the stone,” he said. “Caulking lasts about five to 20 years, if you’re lucky. But good pointing could last 50 to 100 years or longer.”

The neighborhood is springing for the top-shelf sealant, thanks to earnings from the sale of the vintage posters, along with work and contributions from Logan Square Preservation, the Benjamin Ferguson Fund and Poster Plus.

A construction crew eventually will rehab the monument upward to its stone Eagle top, but the added repairs have to wait for better weather, according to Andrew Schneider, president of Logan Square Preservation.

Funds from the September poster sales could also wind up paying for a laser scan of The Eagle to see if it's level.

“If it were leaning, it would be almost imperceptible, but we need to know if it is,” he said. “What we’d have in the end is a three-dimensional model of the monument — essentially a diagnostic. It may be the most important thing we can do is determine if the monument needs a lot of work.”

Hidden damage could eventually benefit from the use of Tax Increment Financing, he added, but for now the work is paid for and underway.

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