Imperial marble & Granite craftsmanship

what you see here was not made with machines this is handcrafted piece by piece, all made by hand Masterpiece we believe that when Mashiach will come, every shul will go up to Eretz Yisrael when you build a shul in today’s style - a 2020 style when Mashiach will come it’s going to be a problem because you’re going to take this building and put it in Eretz Yisrael it won’t look like it belongs there so when you spend this kind of money on such a project and the ownership wanted this building to be next level so we designed it in a way it should fit IY”H when it needs to go up I traveled a lot to Eretz Yisrael to dream and brainstorm together with Hershy And of course Shmily from our team the design has a lot of European style the color is Eretz Yisrael style you walk in and it has this ten star hotel feel but in a holy Beis Medrash version especially all the psukim that are on the walls this gives you a very, very warm very rich, but very warm at the same time I believe that when you build something timeless even though the architecture needs to be from the past the design needs to be new so every part the architecture, the structure of it is historical but the design part, sometimes it’s the handle sometimes it’s the updated color that brings it together that the design should feel new the idea is it has to be very, very, very rich feel otherwise you didn’t accomplish anything sometimes people want a rich look and it’ll be too gaudy, too much we didn’t want it to be too much we wanted it to be in a way minimalistic when you go minimalistic, and you don’t have the right material,it's going to look dead you need to have the balance between minimalistic and at the same time extremely rich -1:57 Jerusalem stone gives you that feel I saw that this building, this Beis Medrash is going to be something it’s going to be a new landmark normally a landmark is a few hundred or thousand years old this… we’re going to build a new landmark and stone was going to be the scope when I first got the phone call from the designer R’ Meilech Raab,Raab Interiors in general, he is well known to have very unique ideas and I’ve done all kinds of projects already Beis Medrash, fireplaces, Aron Kodesh… here was a project that needed an enormous amount of stone and every area needs the color of the stone to naturally give out a different shade of color so the minute I heard that they want Jerusalem stone I immediately connected to the project my younger years I was in Eretz Yisrael so I understood what they were talking about I then started looking at where I can find this much consistent, it’s very hard to find this much stone and of the best quality at first all the stone was overseas It was being cut I went there to see how it’s being cut we needed to make a lot of changes sort through the waste some material was disqualified carefully selected other material then the work by hand began we’re talking here about handcrafted stone what you see here was not made with machines this is handcrafted piece by piece, all made by hand Jerusalem stone comes from the hills around Jerusalem and every area has different colors and it’s unpredictable you can’t know ahead of time what it will look like when you cut stone, you don’t know before what’s inside there are a lot of natural holes in the stone that you can’t use you need to break off a piece of stone, polish it by hand I took a piece of stone and the first thing I did was slice of one slab of stone every area of this building from when the stone came off the mountain we knew exactly where it was going to go thousands of square feet of stone every stone that you see you walk up the steps in the Beis Medrash it was cut a specific way to give a certain effect then in the main hall of the Beis Medrash we took at the beginning 20 slabs of stone and cut it in a vein cut,like the block was cut - 3:59 and then I told them to turn around the block and cut the other way it should give a different effect I’m the project manager on this project I got involved from the pre-planning before foundation once we figured out we wanted to go with stone that’s when we started looking shopping around for people who can handle such a large project that’s when we figured out that Imperial is actually the big guy for this kind of situation the uniqueness of this job was everything… every single piece over here, is one piece of stone heavy, beautiful stones it’s not a simple thing everything needs to be reaccounted Structurally-wise this weighs a lot more than any other building the framing for this the structures that will be able to hold these stones we had to bring in steel guys from all over upstairs for the Aron Kodesh there was so much involved calculating if it’s strong enough to hold the stones or not all of this was the unique and challenging part of this project and the fun part also of this project I would say we got a design for the library very late in the game and… we weren’t sure if we’ll have something maybe some painted sheetrock but Imperial pulled through in a matter of weeks from bringing stone importing, expediting everything that normally takes months and months of coordination took literally like weeks and they executed to perfection a ton of effort when into this Very, very… there were nights that the Imperial team worked every day until 10 at night non-stop there were crews there at 7amthey rotated, left at 5pm brought a new crew until 10 pm just to make us and the customer happy and the goal happy obviously I got a phone call from Meilech Raab that he’s planning to build a major project a Beis Medrash that the world has never seen before for the renowned Chassid and philanthropist R’ Yoel Landau And he wants me on his team you’re talking here about very unique stones both in quality and in quantity and the weight of the stone that needs to be handled there probably isn’t a company here locally that ever did something like this and they wanted someone with experience not someone who will learn on the job that’s why I stepped in and took the lead with the full responsibility it took several months to understand the design and to review the weight of the stones and the logistical aspect of the stones what comes first and second and so on what size brackets what kind of enforcements are needed the Aron Kodesh has stones that weigh a 1000 lbs we first brought a sample, installed it and then broke it it was important to see how hard it is to take apart these stones to understand and see if it will hold well you can say that in this building no synthetic or fake materials were used everything is made with stainless steel measured, expensive, and powerful enforcement in this place we used natural materials meaning to say, when you use natural materials you can’t go wrong this alone gives the entire impression of the job you don’t need an excuse why it’s beautiful it’s not the LED lights or something else it’s the natural beauty of it all when you walk in and see such a stone straight from nature measured from the mountain for this you can’t go wrong no one has managed to do this before this was made by following historical architecture no one just made something up themselves made up a new design take cornices and crowns and turn it like a triangle or diamond because someone decided that this is nice this design follows historical architectural books when you go with the rules, you can’t go wrong It’s personally satisfying to see that B”H everything is as it should be it all flows and is a success BH, only with Siyata D’Shmayah there’s no greater pleasure than this the Aron Kodesh has what’s called Corinthian capitals the four columns have on top of it a crown this crown weighs about 600 - 700 pounds this crown is designed like a typical crown that existed during Bayis Sheini in the Beis Hamikdash and I showed the designer a template of it that was found in the old city of Yerushalayim and I told him; identical, this is the design this is what you should follow and you have a historical basis if someone asks; what's this design? you can show him this is it, it comes from somewhere I can’t think of another company not only within our heimishe community but in general any local company That could have handled this job my name is Yossi Brill and I work for Imperial Marble and Granite I’m working at Imperial for close to 8 years I got involved in this project Hershy tells me one day we have a big project a Beis Medrash that they want to price stone for it I looked at the plans right from the beginning we saw that this is not a simple project that we’re talking about a project that will involve a huge amount of stone you need to understand the vision of the customer here it was Raab Interiors,starting with Meilech and Shmiel Hersh that explained it all in more details from there we went on and put it down with pen and paper as we say pen and paper by us means that we make shop drawings for it Shop drawings is basically to understand that the designer and the stone fabricator which is Imperial Marble what everyone wants and what it will look like every detail exactly what the designer wants and how it will look in reality once it’s installed once the shop drawings were finalized and approved it needed to go to the fabrication team to make sure that they understand and know how to cut every stone we have here stones of all sizes it’s not plain and regular even high end homes you get slabs of a certain thickness here you’re talking about areas that are 2 inches orr 5 inches we had to make sure that while they cut the stones that they know the thickness of the slab itself how to cut it in order we should be able to produce and make the details that the designer had in mind during manufacturing we had to make sure that the puzzle comes together and when we’ll get to the job site we won’t have any challenges to actually install it once it was done we started creating it which means it goes into crates and we have to make sure that no pieces break make sure that the pieces that are in one crate doesn’t damage the pieces when we get to the job site the outcome from this project every single stone, every kind of finish should come out every detail, that came out 100% perfect to a ‘T’ as they say it’s something you can't describe it’s not something that can be explained with pen and paper what this means my name is Shmily Ungar, and I work together with Meilech Raab my part in this Beis Medrash was to take the design concept And bring it to life to figure out where every stone goes how to make it, what to make and when to make it pictures… sketches we traveled all over to view historical buildings and it ended with an actual building it went back and forth I sent certain drawings to Imperial basically design drawings of every wall, every column, every molding every door, every window had a separate drawing it went back and forth with comments all the markups back and forth it took a while but in the end it became a beautiful project the whole idea to make everything out of stone to figure out the architectural part of the stone it all needed to follow actual architectural rules it was the most tricky part not choosing the colors and so on it was figuring out the actual architecture of the project the final product is probably 100% more than I expected we envisioned this but when I walk in I can't believe it actually happened I got involved in this project when Hershy and Yossi approached me to look over the plans I saw it was a big job I knew this would require a lot of focused energy we sat down and went over every detail when the shipments will arrive when I got to the job site every crate had a number made sure where it had to go on the job site and we started laying out all the stones and every stone had a number where it has to be placed where it needs to be installed we BH had a big team here we were able to have between 30 - 40 workers here every day we got to a ratio we started doing the floors then the floor had a specific design it needed to follow we gave all the information to the installation team on how to lay it out the biggest challenge we had was how to install the columns because the concrete wasn’t 100% straight and how to install the Aron Kodesh, the big pieces it’s a big accomplishment And a very good feeling that you can walk out of the job site knowing that everything was done to the last detail Making sure that all the details are how it should be Polishing, glue, anything that needed to be fixed the biggest success we had here was the communication between the laborers, and our own team at Imperial Marble, and with the designers the contractors, everyone was ready to help with anything that I needed I want to separately thank my boss Hershy for always being patient Thank you Yossi, Sam Ungar, Yoeli Vizel for always being available to help with anything I needed anything involving the installation they were always there to help me my name is SImcha Rosenbaum I ran this project coordination of everything between the contractor and all the subs I got involved in the project when we were building the foundation we were searching for companies that could deliver this amount of stone, this amount of work, this amount of laborers and of course we researched several companies we priced it out companies in Italy, companies in France the only one we thought would be able to deliver it was Imperial we’re talking about 50, 000 pieces of stone a lot of the stones are anchors the way it is installed there probably doesn’t exist another building like this we coordinated things like overnight shifts they worked in their Mexico shop, in their overseas shop they worked a crazy amount of time to deliver it to perfection when everything arrived it was like a puzzle Everything went into place we didn’t have a factory here, we couldn’t take things back they brought here all their machinery they cut slabs here, everything was on site we needed to bring snow, to collect rain because Imperial was working on the roof to install the stone and we couldn’t make a stage to collect the rain usually it takes 2 to 3 months to collect enough rainwater to make sure in case there are Halachic issues we should be able to collect it good the only way we were able to fill it was by bringing snow to the roof It was a daunting task Imperial was the first to jump in to bring workers, trucks, yungerleit that they knew that could travel to be there 7 to 8 hours away all Imperial, all his laborers I want to thank him separately for this it was a pleasure to work with them and we’re looking forward to working with them on another project I have many projects buildings, here locally or in other places this amount of work and effort such beautiful stones and such beautiful work should go into a Beis Medrash it’s a special honor especially for such a Beis Medrash when I look at this Bimah and Aron Kodesh the Mikvah is still at the top of my mind, and I put together these 3 things the carvings, handcrafted from the pillars of the Beis Medrash the doors, and the stone that sticks out over there in middle of the Aron Kodesh it’s all one, I can’t separate them I have to thank my father; I got my talent for stone from him I used to know nothing about stone I remember when I first started working for him all those years ago The entire Imperial Family and the Raab Interiors Family Imperial Marble means Yossi Brill and all the others, it’s hard to thank everyone separately and Raab Interiors which is of course Meilech Raab and Shmiel Hersh Ungar that sat for days and nights this is heart- this cannot be repaid - this is heart then there’s Simcha Rosenbaum and Chaim Meir Fuchs from Preferred Builders and of course, most important of all, let’s not forget R’ Yoel that gave us the opportunity to be a part of this it’s a zchus for our company to be a part of this a place of torah and tefillah, where no one talks during davening all these things that he’s built this Beis Medrash has changed Klal Yisrael and it will change Klal Yisrael