After earning his bachelor’s in philosophy from Brown University, Rich Muckle began working as a carpenter and restorer. In the colonial period homes on Providence’s East Side, he learned to understand and appreciate historic structures and the technology of preservation. Soon he was involved in commercial restorations and adaptive reuse of historic buildings.
The next decade bought new challenges when Rich Muckle moved his talents to Lowell MA and became involved in the renaissance of the Lowell mills.
The cupola atop Lowell’s Boot Cotton Mills had become structurally unsound. The Mills, which were soon to become a museum of the Lowell National Historical Park, required a specialist. Rich Muckle used epoxies and replication materials and joinery to structurally stabilize the kingpost and cupola posts and ceiling, replicated the original finial, which had failed beyond salvage, and restored, gilded and reinstalled the finial.
The Appleton Mills are graced with a pair of massive, free-flying, five-storey wood staircases. When the mills were restored, it was thought that because the stairs were more than 8 inches out of level, they could be made usable again only by the use of visible steel plates and wires. Rich Muckle stabilized the staircases by using a channel of epoxy in the central stair wind, and by careful removal, restoration, refitting and re-installation of staircase components.
Sue Muckle joined with Rich Muckle to lead their work in larger scale projects, primarily governmental and religious landmark restorations. The next fifteen years provided ample preservation challenges and accomplishments, and many of the Muckles’ projects won state and national recognition.
A thirteen-month labor of love by Rich and Sue Muckle to preserve this National Register colonial home included new exterior moldings to match the high-style originals, new radially sawn scarf-jointed clapboards in aligned four-foot lengths, saving and restoring all the original window sash, structural stabilization, and a complete interior restoration to retain all period features, including paneling and door repair and preservation of the original plaster.
At 267’, the Ayer tower is a landmark for the Merrimack valley. With the collapse of the textile mills, it had fallen into disrepair. Rich Muckle designed the swing stage access for the work: masons carefully toothed out brickwork over each clock face and swing stages were hung at each side of the 44’ wide tower. Rich also engineered the lifting and rebuilding of the clock house. Sue Muckle supervised the project: the copper roof was repaired, the clock and its face, hands and dials restored, the masonry pointed, the failing parapets rebuilt, the clock and bell level floors stabilized, the clock house was rebuilt, and a new 6,000 pound bell was installed.
A small town’s treasure, this project was watched by the whole community and Rich Muckle reported progress each week on community TV. Rich was able to lift and reset the cupola on a rebuilt base, and remake and restore all of the parts, including a new turned finial.
The project, supervised by Sue Muckle, included a new roof, rebuilding of the massive, ornately corbelled chimneys and repair to the copper-clad matching vents, restoration of all of the metal cornice, and new cast stone to replace damaged stone.
Every window in the library was restored by Muckle carpenters, including the radius monumental sash, which had their broken glass replaced with exactly fitted radius glass. Rich Muckle directed the slate and copper repairs, the granite repointing and rebuilding of the turrets, and Sue oversaw the conservation of the civil-war era terra cotta frieze panels, which included the replication of a missing portion of a horse’s foreleg.
The cemetery building received roof, window and door restoration.
As the subcontractor for carpentry, Rich Muckle supervised his restoration team on the restoration of the Bulfinch dome and lantern, including new curved railings, replacement finials, and restoration of the windows, decorative balustrades, and trim.
Replacement of courthouse windows, restoration of the cupola, masonry and roofing restoration, interior renovations, new air conditioning, and a new accessible ramped entrance all took place in a working courthouse without disruption.
The most architecturally and historically important of the Boston Library buildings, this work was part of ongoing phased restoration. In addition to window restoration, Rich Muckle directed conservation of historic flooring.
Over an eighteen-month period, every one of the 925 window sash and all of the exterior entrances underwent restoration by Muckle carpenters. In the Bulfinch building, monumental sash pairs were replaced with new South American mahogany sash to exactly match the original. In the Brigham Annex, the wood sashes were all restored. The metal-clad sash in the East and West wings required such extensive repairs that only one façade was restored, and the rest were replaced with new mahogany sash to match the originals. Over forty sash per week were being restored in the Muckles’ conservation shop in order to meet the aggressive schedule and not disrupt the workings of state government.
Muckles’ carpentry crews restored and replicated over 800 windows, provided over 600 new custom doors and new entrances, restored all of the extensive oak millwork in the historic courtrooms, and provided new custom millwork and casework for all of the new courtrooms and offices, including the spectacular Seven-Justice Courtroom.
In 2005, Rich Muckle was called to consult on extensively damaged historic woodwork at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian, which had just initiated a $350M restoration. This visit launched the Muckle’s expansion beyond Massachusetts, and M&A Architectural Preservation Inc. was formed, to focus on private projects in higher education, cultural facilities, and other technically challenging preservation projects in the region.
Lead abatement had resulted in severe damage to the already well-worn historical woodwork and paneling in the Old Patent Office, DC’s third oldest public building. Rich Muckle developed a method for saving the extensive window and door paneling from demolition, by neutralizing the substrate, repairing the damaged wood fibers, and making selective dutchmen patches to replace moldings and panels. Additionally, M&A furnished and installed the museum’s new millwork and casework.
This unique Tudor building, a National Register property, was suffering from extensive structural deterioration when M&A began its work to stabilize and conserve the structure. The building was timber-framed with mortise and tenon joints, and the timbers were exposed on the interior and exterior. From the time it was built in 1881, water had followed the diagonals to their intersection with horizontal and vertical members, leading to extensive deterioration of the mortised pockets and tenons, with failures so severe that the design team decided to replace the timbers. M&A provided new Douglas fir timbers, radio-frequency dried. Siding and trim were replaced to match existing in South American mahogany. The monumental stained glass windows were removed so that new mahogany sash and frames could be built to match the originals, which were misshapen and deteriorated. M&A also re-sided the interior of the new gymnasium walls and ceilings.
M&A Architectural provided a complete documentation report of the existing conditions of this Jacobean-style period apartment: paneling, beams, staircase, balcony, windows, doors, fireplaces and mantels, and antique chandeliers and sconces. Then, M&A carpenters carefully dismantled the entire apartment, marking, measuring, disassembling, and carefully crating each architectural element.
M&A restored the façade and windows of this National Trust revolutionary landmark. The Old State House was once the site of important historical events like the Boston Massacre, and it is now a museum, the most popular tourist spot of the Boston National Park.
M&A worked with a team of architectural conservators and the National Park Service to determine which elements of the façade had exceeded their useful life, and replicated them with South American mahogany. The remainder of the components, including all of the windows, were conserved with epoxies and wood Dutchmen to match the species, grain and joinery.