Ornamental sheet metal manufacturer restores old buildings to former glory

One of the most important skills for workers is quality craftsmanship. Images: Heather & Little

Across cities small and large, historic buildings and statues are a point of pride to those who live there and provide the lure of charm to those stopping by for a visit. The most precious treasures of the last century and before are now reaching the point where preservation is just not enough and significant restoration is required. That’s where Heather & Little comes in.

As a family business that got its start in 1925 as a roofing contractor providing shingle and gutter work in the GTA, the company quickly developed a reputation for quality ornamental sheet metal work, particularly for churches and government buildings. During the 1920s and ‘30s, stamped metal was quite common and many shops were performing this type of work. Just a decade later, though, stamping fell out of favour as new technologies emerged. Many stamping companies in the region just disappeared.

“Because we were primarily a roofing contractor, we continued to stamp,” said Marc Jamieson, vice-president of sales and projects, Heather & Little Ltd., Markham, Ont. “And as the time went on, eventually buildings that had existing stamped ornamental sheet metal components required repairs or components that needed to be replaced. We happened to be one of the few companies in North America, not just the Toronto area, that were still doing this type of work.”

As demand picked up, the shop focused more of its work on special projects for other contractors restoring buildings. The company’s reach expanded and eventually it developed into a fabrication shop in addition to a contracting business.

“With this type of work, we really need to have a willingness to think outside of the box, and we take on projects that many other companies shy away from,” said Jamieson. “Historic reproductions tend to be seen as more trouble than they are worth because a lot of time and money need to go into these unique, one-off projects. There is never, or at least for roughly 80 to 100 years, going to be a duplicate of the work, which means no repeat business. That also means that we know when we produce tooling, it’s being set up for only one job. Then that job is done and those tools are almost never used again. They are just gathering dust, and that’s why a lot of people really don’t want to get involved with the projects that we do.”

Operations

For the most part, Heather & Little’s work is primarily one-off jobs, but it’s their ability to break down a challenging fabrication project and find innovative ways to solve unique challenges that makes it all worthwhile.

“We have developed a proprietary method of stamping that lends itself to small, one-off projects, as opposed to most manufacturers, whose tooling needs to be robust and capable of doing thousands and thousands of stampings. We do it in a more economical manner. Our tooling may not last for thousands of pressings, but it gets us through the job.”

At its 14,000-sq.-ft. facility in Markham, the shop still works with a number of old-school pieces of equipment like hand brakes and hand shears. In fact, Jamieson boasted that they even have equipment that’s upwards of 100 years old. At the same time, the shop is always looking to take advantage of state-of-the-art technology like plasma cutters, CNC press brakes, and power shears.

“The technology we have is all over the board, from this ancient hand-driven stuff to brand-new equipment,” said Jamieson. “And we currently employ around 40 people across our Markham facility and a small satellite location in Ottawa. One of the real interesting things about our shop is that we get to be detectives. For example, our estimators need to investigate old photographs and sketches to look at projects and parts that no longer exist and find the best way to make a building or statue whole again. Especially when it comes to restored buildings, we can’t just rely on what we see, as some buildings have been taken apart and modernized. We have to do a deep-dive into how things looked and worked and then find a way to bring that to life.”

This is why Jamieson said that one of the most important skills for workers is quality craftsmanship. The ability to work with their hands and really get innovative makes all the difference for the success of projects. It’s not just about setting up a machine.

Heather & Little employs around 40 people across its Markham facility and a small satellite location in Ottawa. Marc Jamieson noted that the most exciting part of the shop is that workers get to be detectives.

“I think that artisan mentality is sort of lost in today's trades,” said Jamieson. “Our employers not only need to be skilled, but they also need to be able to teach these skills to the next generation. No one is really doing this work anymore, so they haven’t picked up the artistic and creative skills needed for this type of metal manufacturing. It’s so important for us to keep this type of ornamental sheet metal stamping alive because it’s really everywhere you look.”

But it’s also about finding a way to effectively replicate and make things better at the same time. Is something required to meet today’s safety standards? If so, how can that be incorporated without losing the integrity of the design?

Project Modernization

Heather & Little recently took on a building project in Vancouver that required it to reproduce copper tiles with the end result looking exactly as it had before. The catch: The customer wanted the building to be upgraded for seismic protection.

“We had to incorporate a substructure for earthquake protection, so not only were we not making it exactly as it was before, but we were also modifying it for modernization standards,” said Jamieson. “When it comes to regulation, it can vary from municipal, provincial, and federal governments. A lot of properties and buildings are protected under certain programs requiring a lot of hoops to be jumped through. That work usually falls on the owner, architect, or primary contractor, but we can easily step in and produce exactly what it is they are looking for as long as we are given project parameters.”

Jamieson noted that he’s been very fortunate to get to work on some important pieces of history, including the Statue of Liberty in New York, Canada’s Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, and the Thomas Jefferson Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

“We recently worked on a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed mansion in L.A. that included pressed copper panels for a building facade,” said Jamieson. “The original was carved by hand in the 1920s. Over the years the existing copper was damaged and we had to re-create it exactly. It had to fit together with the existing design, and because it's an important heritage site in L.A., it was very difficult not only to figure out how to properly do it but execute it well. So, we had to make these fairly large sheets of a repeating pattern. We quickly realized that there was no way to make a die that big, and it couldn’t be roll formed. We had to stamp it using a smaller die that was able to repeat itself over and over again and in the panel. That type of thing is always a challenge and it's hard to justify the cost of tooling for something that's going to be used only once. But it really turned out well.”

Most of Heather & Little’s work is in copper, but it can work with all types of sheet metal, including galvanized, zinc, stainless steel, bronze, and brass. But copper is the most user-friendly material to work with and is very forgiving when it comes to surface finish.

“It’s the most beautiful of all the metals,” said Jamieson. “And it’s our preference to work with it, and we will steer people that way if there is an option of material type. But for the most part, people come to us with an idea, and we work as best we can to make it look and feel exactly as it did 10, 20, 100 years ago.”

The shop is excited about a lot of the work that it has done on the Parliament Building’s copper roof and anticipates that there will be a lot more work to come. Having a foot in the door from previous restoration work may help the company secure contracts. There’s a lot of money being invested in building preservation across North America in the last decade, and Heather & Little is ready to restore.

“We have a solid reputation amongst heritage professionals in North America as the go-to company for things like this,” said Jamieson. “That is not to say that we solely work on restorations, as we do take on a few new projects, but we really focus on the artisan nature of the work we do.”

Heather & Little, heatherandlittle.com

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