Mason

Masonry is the building trade with the longest memory. Mud brick, cut stone and fired brick built the cities of antiquity, the cathedrals of Europe and the row houses of Baltimore.

Load-bearing and veneer

Until the 1880s, walls carried the building. The taller the building, the thicker the wall at its base: Chicago's Monadnock Building (1891), sixteen stories of load-bearing brick, has walls about six feet thick at the ground floor. That limit is one reason the steel frame won. Today most masonry is veneer, a skin tied back to a frame, but masons still build load-bearing block walls, fire-rated stair and elevator cores, chimneys and retaining walls.

The craft

A mason's accuracy comes from the corners, called leads. Build the leads plumb and level, stretch a line between them, and every course in between follows the line. Mortar is weaker than brick on purpose: when a wall moves, the joint should crack, not the unit, so it can be repointed.

Restoration

Much of the work in older cities is restoration: repointing with mortar that matches the original lime, replacing spalled brick, resetting stone. It is skilled, well paid and hard to automate.

Learning it here

The Masonry program covers safety, mortar and materials, block and brick laying, reinforced masonry, stone and restoration. Credentials prepared: NCCER Masonry Levels 1–3 and OSHA 10.

Where it leads

Journeyman mason, restoration specialist, stone setter, foreman, estimator, or masonry contractor.