While so much of the restoration and refurbishing of a facility like the American Tobacco Company with one million square feet of floor space covering a sixteen acre campus has to utilize the latest in technologically advanced materials, one might be tempted to overlook the concentrated effort to restore these buildings as they were, not just renovate them.

When these older buildings were erected, construction materials were mostly garnished from natural resources. Wood timbers dominated the early construction style of buildings like Bull, Lucky Strike, Reed, Hill and Washington.

Since these buildings were built to be a factory complex, the carpenters of that day were motivated to construct flooring that would carry the weight of millions of pounds of tobacco and the machinery used to manufacture those long time favorite of all smokes, Lucky Strikes.

On November 21, 2003, I made a close examination of the re-building of the flooring in the Washington Building. Future occupants of this structure - not in anyone's wildest imagination - will require industrial strength floors. These buildings are being restored for a variety of uses, office complexes, retail establishments, restaurants and dwellings.

The campus is being promoted as a wonderful place for people in Downtown Durham to live, work and play.

But to the credit of those who have envisioned this project and are seeing it through to completion, an appreciation for history and the historical significance of the construction of these buildings is part of the fiber that will tie all of these structures into a modern facility that will unite the past with the present and the future.

In the Washington Building, floors were constructed to carry the weight of fork lifts moving tons of tobacco. Four inch thick timbers, six inches wide, were tongue and grooved with splines as a sub floor supported by sixteen inch beams.

Sub floors in most new construction today is made of particle board less than an inch think, supported by maybe two by ten inch floor joists.

But think, a sixteen inch beam would be just about all the usable timber in an average pine tree.

Those who walk on the new floors in the Washington Building will probably have no idea the strength - and the history - that is beneath their footsteps.

These sub floors are being rebuilt - not to satisfy economic practicalities - but to restore what was there in the beginning. The top floor covering might have a new and contemporary look, but beneath that top floor will be a monument to the history of the construction of these buildings.

To pay homage to the marriage of the old with the new, the photograph accompanying this essay is of a section of the four by six inch timbers supported by a sixteen inch beam. To pay homage to the importance of marrying the contemporary with the historical, this photograph has been doctored with special color effects.

To pay homage to the truth, this photograph was doctored that way and I couldn't figure out how to undo it.