Piece Maker : His Work Restores What Nature and Time Tear Down

Vincent G. Panucci owns United Staff & Stone, a small company near Dodger Stadium that restores, repairs and makes moldings, facades and balustrades for historic buildings, churches and residences. Much of his work has been to repair damage from the earthquakes of 1971, 1987, 1991 and 1994.

He has undertaken projects at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Boyle Heights and is working on the Young Apartments on Grand Avenue. Panucci projects also have included St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, the Biltmore Hotel and the Shrine Auditorium.

A film of plaster dust permeates the shop. Photographs, scrapbooks and blueprints tell Panucci’s story of the last half-century. He worked at the houses of Hollywood celebrities Dean Martin, John Wayne, Aaron Spelling, Charles Bronson and Dionne Warwick, as well as at the Getty Museum and at Caltech.

Panucci was interviewed by Berkley Hudson.

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I was born in Southern Italy, 74 moons ago. Maybe I don’t look it, but I am 74.

I went to work at 11 for a mason, my uncle. He was repairing homes, building homes. We used to grind by hand the terrazzo, the chips of marble mixed with cement, laid in a layer of maybe a half-inch. We’d grind it with water and grinding stone to bring out the sheen. We did everything by hand.

I used to mix the mud, the mortar, with a hoe. It was hard work. My uncle was not kindly to me. My father was in this country and told him to take care of me. My mother said: “Your uncle is your mentor.”

In my hometown, I used to draw pretty good. So they called me Michelangelo.

I came to this country in 1938, when I was 17. My home state was Connecticut. Then I came to California during the war to work for the government, for the Forestry Service. I was a citizen, but I had to register as an enemy alien because I was from Italy.

Before I bought this company in the early 1970s, I was doing masonry. In the ‘50s, there were tract homes that needed masonry, chimneys, slate floors, tile floors, tile sinks.

We did a lot of work for actors in Beverly Hills, Bel-Air. We had to do this finial (a decorative top) for a gate for Dean Martin. Somebody told me about this company that was finishing work at the Paul Getty Museum, that they might be able to help me with the finial. They said the Getty would be their last job. They were selling their company. So I said: “OK, I’ll buy the company, providing I can work with you to get the hang of it.” That’s what I did.

As a mason, I stacked bricks one on top of another. It’s tiresome, boring. This is more interesting. You create things. It can take months. You start out with broken pieces. You piece it together. Then make molds. We do everything from A to Z.

In this work you always learn. Otherwise I would have given up a long time ago. You learn until you die.

You have to specialize. Otherwise you’re a jack of all trades, master of none. This is the era of specialization. So we do columns, balustrades, fireplaces, mantels and things like that. We restore.

The No. 1 thing is we take the pieces that have been damaged, bring them to the shop and make samples to blend the texture, the color, and make it stronger.

Most of our work is veneer, not structural. But when we work on Gothic windows in churches, we put in a big steel rod about 20 feet across. We work around that rod. Plus put some flat steel pieces around to strengthen things so that when seismic movements take place, it’s solid.

In some cases we do a structural project, like St. Mary’s, where one of three windows collapsed in the Jan. 17 earthquake. These were solid, precast concrete windows, maybe 4 to 6 inches thick. They were way up where the peak is in front of the church. We strengthened those with brackets and put in special screws that drive through concrete. That church has been there 70, 80 years. In those days when they constructed it, they didn’t think about seismic movements.

It’s hard to remember all the things we’ve done.

At the Biltmore the telephone company put some cables in, eight or nine years ago. They cut the wires holding the ceiling. So the ceiling fell in. We had to replace the coffers, 18 of these octagonal, Venetian type ceiling covers. We had to take one of the good ones down, make a rubber mold and a replica. Then there was all this little gingerbread design in between that we had to make and replace. When we finished, you couldn’t tell the difference.

At the Shrine Auditorium, we had to get a cherry picker to work on the roof and north side. That was damaged, I think, in the ’71 earthquake. There were a lot of cracks in the pediments. We had to rebuild them by hand.

Sometimes we’re replicating or enhancing the work of a sculptor. Long ago, they took their time. They were dedicated. You see beautiful proportion on the columns they made.

Nowadays, anything goes. They mix birds with mice. There’s no style. Because you have money doesn’t mean you have taste. I’ve talked myself out of some jobs. People say: “Mr. Panucci, what do y ou think?’ I say: “You’re making a mistake. You don’t want to overpower the situation. You want balance.”