A summer spent working in Naples, Italy, on a stone church set a course for Gerry Raffaele, owner of Swampscott-based Raffaele Construction—a course from which he has never strayed. “We were taught by people who were taught by the Roman archdiocese,” says the mason, whose work can be seen throughout the North Shore. He learned to cut, shape, and trim stone from Italian master masons. “There is a special technique that we were taught but I don’t want to reveal all my secrets.”
Having grown from their modest beginnings as a few-man family operation to the burgeoning business it is today, Raffaele Construction now staffs nearly 30 masons. Over the past 25 years, Gerry has perfected his technique and trained many others to create the kind of custom cuts for which Raffaele Construction is well known. He and his team drill, wedge, and split chunks of stone, then hand chisel, fit, and face them—all of which adds up to a distinct signature style. “When you see my work, that is what you see a lot of—the preparation of the face of the stone. That is what I was taught in Europe. They worked with a lot of marble, which has a square face. They took chisels and traced [the marble] until they got an irregular face; marble is a lot easier to work with than other materials like granite because it is softer.” Gerry references the many marble churches seen throughout Italian cities as inspiration for his own work.
Sourcing granite from Rockport and Quincy quarries, Gerry handpicks all that he uses. In fact, “by hand” is how he does all of his signature work. Referring to his practice of salvaging blocks from old foundations, he says: “We recycle them and build walls and create structures from salvage. We reclaim all the granite and reuse it to build beautiful walls.”
Of his many projects, Gerry highlights a stone house in Nahant. Typically he and his team bring stone to a site to be custom fabricated. In this case, the house was already there, in a way. It just needed building. “When we got on site, there was a big mountain of rock,” says Gerry. “We started chipping the rock out, and we had piles and piles of it.” Those piles dictated the turn the entire project was to take. After some deliberation as to the practicalities of building a stone house, they opted to use the existing stone to construct the walls; one thing led to another and they ended up with an entire stone-veneer house.
For another, more recently completed project (also in Nahant), the crew removed a preexisting house built in the 1820s in favor of a new, more cost-efficient structure. “We built a house that looks like it was built in the early 1900s. The interior includes a custom built-in stone fireplace and cabinets.”
Raffaele Construction’s classic European style masonry is unique in New England. Specializing in decorative stone walls, columns, outdoor and interior fireplaces, patios, and drives, they use “antiqued granite” in such a way as to reflect Italian and New England traditions. Clearly, Gerry Raffaele is a mason whose entirely devoted to enduring customs.