Dietrich Werner’s lecture on March 31, 2005, given at the Williams Lake Lodge.
American Natural Cement Conference March 31 – April 2, 2005 Rosendale, NY
Listen to Dietrich here:
Details on this conference were reported by Linda Tantillo in the Natural News, Vol. 7 Issue 1 of Spring 2005. From that article:
The conference was cosponsored by The Century House Historical Society and the Northeast Chapter of The Association for Preservation Technology International and one of the corporate sponsors was Edison Coatings of Plainville, Connecticut, the company that is once again producing Rosendale natural cement using limestone leftover when A. J. Snyder’s Century Cement Company went out of business in the 1970s.
There were about 75 people attending the conference, some from as far away as Poland and Austria. Some came from the cement industry, some from restoration companies or projects, and others from historic preservation groups; a mix of interesting men and women from all over. The lectures were sometimes rather technical—these were people who really knew their cement!– but with a little background in chemistry and earth science I was able to follow along and learn quite a bit. What really amazed me, however, was how much those attending knew about Rosendale cement. I guess we sometimes don’t fully realize nowadays just how important our Rosendale cement was, nor how important it is to restoration projects now.
Thursday morning at Williams Lake Hotel, the conference started off with the beautiful video slide show “The Cement that Built America” which showed images of the many impressive and important structures all over the country built of Rosendale cement.
Dietrich then gave us a fascinating look at the history of Rosendale’s cement region. His enthusiasm and wealth of knowledge make his presentations fascinating no matter how many times I hear them, and I always learn something new every time.
Read that issue here: