Excerpt from White House Stone Carving: Builders and Restorers The removal of as many as 40 layers of deteriorated paint has made it much easier today to appreciate the superb workmanship of the eighteenth-century carvers. Beyond the carvings themselves, the enormous task of building a magnificent stone structure along the banks of the Potomac River is a truly remarkable story, a tribute to the vision of our founding fathers and to the craftsmen who realized that vision. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.