Fairville Friends School had a bounded space between buildings with no purpose and no character. The potential was obvious. An outdoor room for a school community that needed one. What it needed was someone willing to build the whole thing from scratch, not dress up what was already there.

EHS built it from the structural level. Block walls veneered in fieldstone, a full concrete slab poured over rebar, red brick set in herringbone across the entire deck. The arch came last. A freestanding fieldstone arch at the courtyard entrance, built without shortcuts. Each stone selected and fitted by hand, the arch holding itself by the compression of its own weight. When the centering came down, it held.

The courtyard has been in daily use since completion. Students cross under that arch every school day without thinking about it. Thirty years from now they’ll still be crossing under it, and it will still be standing. That is what building something correctly looks like.

Fairville Friends School – Chadds Ford, PA