Celebrating Labor Day: The Building Trades

QuarryHouse team member installing stonework, Photo: Kathleen Harrison Photography

With the passing of Labor Day, COUPAR wants to celebrate the building trades. The architect and designer get the glory for a project, while the builder and subcontractors execute their vision. COUPAR is fortunate to represent and work with many exceptional builders and artisans. Recently, photographer Kathleen Harrison captured two of our clients, Van Acker and QuarryHouse, on a Sutro Architects job site. Over the years, the builder and stonemason have collaborated on numerous high-end residences, including a Ugo Sap-designed equestrian ranch in Central California and Ike Kligerman Barkley's Cotswold-esque cottage on the Peninsula. 

A builder framed by scaffolding. Photo: Kathleen Harrison Photography

Gary Van Acker of Van Acker and QuarryHouse's Ed Westbrook share a commitment to the craft of building and pride in their work. Now, the second generation of their companies continues their legacies along with all the talented builders, artisans, and project managers they employ. A book from 1974 echoes their dedication; Studs Terkel wrote Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, exploring how Americans viewed their jobs. Terkel interviewed over one hundred people, including the carpenter, boat builder, poet, teacher Nick Lindsay, and stonemason Carl Murray Bates. 

Prepping for drywall. Photo: Kathleen Harrison Photography

Bates started in the trade when he was seventeen, and at fifty-seven, he reflected on his profession's timeless quality: "Stone is still stone, mortar is still the same as it was fifty years ago. ....Automation has tried to get in the bricklayer. Set' em with a crane. I've seen several put up that way. But you're always got in-between the windows and this and that. It doesn't seem to pan out. We do have an electric saw. We do have an electric mixer to mix the mortar, but the rest of it's done by hand as it always was," he told Terkel. 

Louis "Studs" Terkel (1912 – 2008), the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, endeavored to preserve American Oral History. In addition to Working, he wrote The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two and  Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. He interviewed Americans across the country and socioeconomic spectrum to leave a permanent record of their thoughts and feelings.  If Terkel were alive today, what would his interviews reveal? 

Up On the Roof. Photo: Kathleen Harrison Photography