Christopher Stevick
Born in Northern California, he grew up in Menlo Park. A veteran of the Viet Nam War, he trained with the Signal Corps and was stationed in Viet Nam as the Cam Ranh Bay Batallion Mail Clerk for seven companies. After being honorably discharged, he attended Humboldt State University and received his degree in Art and Art History. He took jobs in construction and eventually became a general contractor.
When Chris and his wife, Elaine, were looking for their first home, Elaine introduced him to Petaluma. After walking around the historic downtown, he gasped, “What saved this place?” The town is like a full-scale catalog of classic architectural styles from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, styles he had mostly seen only in books while studying art history. Convinced they had found the right place to settle, Chris and Elaine have made Petaluma their home since 1978, where they have raised two daughters and a son.
Event Horizon Restoration
Through his company, he has repaired, restored, and preserved many of Petaluma’s major commercial and residential buildings. The numerous architectural gems found in Petaluma’s historic downtown and west side have survived for more than 100 years; many of these iconic structures have benefitted from Christopher’s craftsmanship and attention to detail. Creating or recreating architectural details consistent with the period and style of each particular structure became his specialty. This required combining his artistic training and sensibilities with historical research and his extensive experience using traditional building materials such as granite, marble, tile, brick, metals, and rare woods, and mastering techniques of fabrication like casting, sculpting, stone-cutting and fine woodworking. He gained a reputation for expert color matching and creating appropriate color palettes to guide the completion of exterior restorations.
When Chris has created new work for vintage buildings his results appear as though designed and constructed by the original architects and builders. Chris was hired to complete and decorate the fountain and repair other architectural details at the plaza of the St. Vincent de Paul Church (between Howard and Liberty streets) where the finished work blends perfectly with the original Spanish Revival classic of 1924 (see slides in Stone Repair). Like many other recently restored structures in Petaluma, if you can’t tell the difference between the new and the original work, Chris was probably responsible.
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