The Fort Jackson Hotel legend says it has been around since the Civil War. Although the hotel actually dates back to 1926, Civil War history is prevalent in Waynesburg. So when it came to fixing some problems in the Fort Jackson Hotel, precautions had to be taken to preserve the historic building.

Late in 2016 some problems were noticed in the back of the building. The county had their structure engineer come to see what the problem was and if it could be fixed. By mid-2017, the decision was made to push off construction and just have a temporary fix for the winter months to ensure the problem wouldn’t get any worse. By construction season in 2018, efforts had begun to fix the problem.

The brick was dispatching from the steel, which led to water damage and a very long process of having to take each individual brick out from damaged spots in the building. Jeff Marshall, chief clerk, helped oversee the repair and the crews working to fix the building.

“What they had to do was go through places throughout the building, remove the brick from the exterior of the building that was loose,” said Marshall. “They removed all that, fixed all the steel behind that and then rescued the new bricks to the building and then fixed what was actually damaged.”

Marshall said the repair process was long and exhaustive.  

“The investigation took 16 months as far as trying to determine the degree of how much damage there was,” said Marshall. “How much of that brick needed to be removed and put back into place.”

Keeping the hotel intact was important to preserve the memory of the building intact to its original building blocks, Marshall said. No slowdowns or issues arose throughout the process.

“Knowing it was an older building, we wanted to try to replicate it as much as we could–how the structure was originally designed and how it looked,” said Marshall. “We were able to go and get brick that would match the design of the brick. We did a really good job restoring the building to the way it originally looked.”

The fund to repair this building was taken out of the gas impact money that the county collects. For now, the crew is still on site. Marshall referred to the final touches as “cosmetic,” but he said the job is done as long as no new problems pop up.