The National Cemetery for veterans in the Presidio of San Francisco dates to 1854. The first national cemetery on the West Coast, it serves as the final resting place for 3,000 American service members, including buffalo soldiers and Civil War generals.

The cemetery is bordered by a historic masonry wall consisting of random ashlar basalt masonry units with sandstone coping. As part of the California Department of Transportation’s (DOT) project to improve access to the Golden Gate Bridge at Doyle Drive, our masons were retained to document, disassemble, store, and reassemble six linear feet of the wall in its original location.

The stones were removed by hand, cleaned of mortar residues, soil, and biological growth, and then transported and carefully stored. The remaining exposed edge of the wall was protected to allow construction access while the firm conducted tests to determine the appropriate formulation of historic mortar for eventual reconstruction. Following the completion of the DOT’s bridge access project, our masons reconstructed the historic wall segment according to documentation and records which located each stone in its original position within the wall.