The Walker Zanger Reference Stone Collection is a cooperative project between the Center for Architectural Conservation (CAC) at the University of Pennsylvania and the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI). The collection contains over 5,000 coupons of building stones used in both high-style and vernacular architecture, serving as a living repository of 20th-century and 21st-century stone materials for research and teaching. Current holdings include marbles, granites, limestones, slates, sandstones, onyx, agglomerates, alabasters, basalts, bluestones, and soapstones. It is supplemented by an online database set to be released in the spring of 2025.
The physical collection is split in two mirrored partitions. One is currently managed by the Getty Conservation Institute under the direction of Davide Gulotta, PhD, while the other by the Center for Architectural Conservation, University of Pennsylvania.
The Penn Team
2024: Yanjie Zhang, Priyanka Amin-Patel, Siqi Zhao, and Anna-Marie Veilleux
2025: Shufan Xiao, Shen-Tzu Chen
Project Manager: José C. Hernández
Director: Frank G. Matero
