A French-bred Chattanooga builder brings Old World style to his houses

Steve Lewin, a custom builder at Lewin Construction, is seen at a Cloudland Station home he built in Chickamauga, Ga. / Staff photo by Erin O. Smith
Steve Lewin, a custom builder at Lewin Construction, is seen at a Cloudland Station home he built in Chickamauga, Ga. / Staff photo by Erin O. Smith

In America, the age-old field of masonry is tied to the future. With a surge in development across the U.S., the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects an 11% jump in masonry employment from 2018 to 2028, much higher than the average for all occupations.

In Lewin Construction co-owner Steve Lewin's native France, however, masonry is the groundwork of the past. He grew up on the French coast, surrounded by homes built centuries ago. Because the U.S. is a newer culture, the architecture is less established, he says.

Lewin says that difference in culture presents in how tradespeople are trained. In the U.S., he says, masons are generally trained in one sector, maybe stone or brick. In France, a tradesman will be skilled in all facets of the medium.

After five different masonry crews fell through on a house he's building in Cloudland Station in Chickamauga, Georgia, Lewin and his brother, Sam, started laying the brick themselves. The pair learned as they worked, referencing YouTube videos and books on the proper techniques.

The three-story home is structurally made up of bricks, like the many they grew up surrounded by. That's unusual for a home in the United States, where brickwork is typically used for a facade rather than structural design, says Lewin.

A sort of jack-of-all-trades, Lewin started working with his hands in high school when his parents were redoing their home. In the late '90s, after graduating, he moved to Georgia to attend Covenant College, studying both engineering and the violin. When he wasn't performing in the school's orchestra, he was in the carpentry studio, he says. He counts carpentry, architecture and, now, brick masonry on the list of trades he's taken up.

Under his hands, the space is starting to take shape in Cloudland Station. Speaking with a thick French accent, he melds together the Old World he comes from and the new world he's creating. He's after permanence, a legacy. Because after he's gone, "What's left?" he asks.

More information:

Name: Steve Lewin Age: 40 Occupation: Custom home builder and designer Hometown: Aix-en-Provence * I'm very fond of traditional crafts. Nothing beats a mortise and tenon joint in carpentry. * I've been around almost every single trade starting in high school during the remodeling of my parents' house. It was also a side job. Then, through college, I worked at the carpentry shop at Covenant College. During the summers, I worked for my wife's uncle in Tacoma, Washington, who was a general contractor. He exposed me to a lot of different trades. * When you know already some of the trades or techniques and you're acquainted with it, even if you haven't done it, it's much easier to pick up something new. * In the beginning, [masonry] was a little bit daunting, but it's very pleasant, almost therapeutic labor. * The way we [my brother and I] learn, we just watch a video or read a book and then we'll go and try it out. We figure out our own technique as we go along the way. ... So not the traditional apprenticeship kind of program. I'm almost too impatient for that. * If there's something that motivates our design, it's longevity, a sense of permanence. There's so little of that around us. Everything is temporary. It's a big problem, but it's also a big motivation. * Culturally, people are so used to [seeing brick used as a veneer rather than a structural element] that they don't even pay attention to it anymore. * [In the United States,] a mason is automated. You have a brick mason or you have a block mason or a concrete mason or you have a stone mason. And the person that does the forming is not going to be the one that's going to pour the concrete, and the person that pours is not going to be the one that finishes it. So it's rare to find someone who you can call a mason. Whereas in France, a mason can do stone - he can carve it, he can cut it, he can lay it, you know; he can do brick, he can do concrete and in any shape form. ... He can do everything that has to do with masonry, because it's a thorough education around all of masonry. * And here, it seems like it's more dictated by economics, right? So it makes more sense for someone to specialize in brick, because then they will do a lot of brick and they don't have to train their guys to do anything else in the brick. So it's more efficient economically. * [We live in] a culture of disposable things. People don't think in a multigenerational perspective. * Traveling through the Old Country, you can see a deep sense or weight of time as you travel. I think most Americans are craving for this.

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