Brooks Gentleman has been in the wood window and architectural millwork business for the past 25 years and is currently the owner of Re-View, a manufacturer of custom wood window replicas for historic landmarks across the country based in Kansas City, MO.
Re-View manufactured historically accurate wood window replicas to match the design of the originals for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.
Re-View has an impressive portfolio of work on courthouses in the United States, working on projects from Arizona to Washington DC. The traditional county courthouse is often the most impressive architectural structure in its region. We are always amazed at the distinct architectural styles and how these iconic buildings define a community.
The Knox County Courthouse in Knoxville, Tennessee was built in 1885 and continues to serve as an office for several county departments. Tennessee's first governor is buried on the courthouse lawn.
Maybe it is a deep-seated need to impress that was a result of trying to gain my parents’ attention in a family of five kids. So when someone asks how about the state of my business, I can recite all of the great things that are going on at Re-View with an upbeat flair. I was thinking about this last week as I was on a project site correcting a window product failure.
Although the Window Preservation Standards Collaborative (WPSC) Summit pales by comparison to the thousands that attend an American Institute of Architects convention, this assembly was more like Woodstock than a national convention, and like Woodstock there were some of the best practitioners of the trade represented.
What was once a popular program to invest in when constructing a building, has taken a back seat in recent years. More and more contractors are over looking LEED's significance and see it as an administrative burden instead of a valued resource.
For the Minnesota State Capitol building, built in 1905, we restored hundreds of windows to their original state using Accoya, a treated wood, for exteriors, and century old pine recovered from a lake to match interiors.