Thanks for the response, Sophie. At the moment, I'm just looking for three tiles to replace tiles torn out by a plumber. A whole-ceiling-replacement project is down the road a bit.

If these tiles are in fact 100 yrs old, asbestos concerns aside, you may be out of luck. Are there any markings on the back side you can use to find a manufacturer or model info?

Can you grab 3 tiles from a hidden space to fill your immediate needs until you can redo the ceiling?

Those tiles aren't anything close to 100 years old. What you have there looks typical of tile installed in the 1950s, 1960s, and maybe early 1970s. At one time just about every newly built school building in the US had tile like that.

Some of it had asbestos. A lot of it didn't. If memory serves, and understand that I was pretty young in those days, it was the more expensive products that were made with asbestos (and advertised as "fireproof").

This page has an excellent overview of old ceiling tile and its asbestos risk.

Sorry to say that your chances of finding new tile that matches yours are pretty slim. Your best bet would be to find someone who's tearing out an identical ceiling. I don't think that tile like that is considered a desirable restoration material, and it's not easy to remove intact anyway, so I suspect that even dealers that specialize in salvage building materials won't stock it. I guess it wouldn't hurt to try. Many of them have websites.

You can still get new 12" square ceiling tiles in a few patterns and textures, though I haven't seen a pattern like yours in years. So maybe you could replace those 3 tiles with new ones. They wouldn't match, but it might look better than the gaps, until you can re-do the whole ceiling.

The problem is that I don't know of anyone who sells individual tiles. For example I see Lowe's offering Armstrong 12" square textured ceiling tiles, but only in packages of 40 tiles. (Link for info only; no endorsement intended.)

Steve J: Yes, I have access to the back of a tile. I'll see what I find there. Thanks.

DavidR: Thanks the for information and the links. I'll check out the salvage outfits.

Hi dmwalter02, would you mind telling me what you found on the back of the tile? We have the same ones, but I don't want to pull out the tiles because I'm not yet sure about asbestos. I'm hoping that knowing the brand will give me more info about the asbestos risk.

Hi CN. I forgot to ask the contractor to save the remains of the damaged tiles until he'd already removed them and discarded them. Sorry.

Is there any way you could remove a couple of tiles from somewhere else or remove a whole small room of tiles to have a stockpile, say a room that would be easier to fix the drywall ceiling?

My grandmother's house had these tiles placed over old ceilings in the late 1950s. There were a couple of small rooms or closets that could have been used to replace tiles in large rooms.

I have the same problem with a small hall. I would like to replace all the ceiling with the same pattern (you are showing the same pattern that I have). House build in 1974. e-mail maxine@graceba.net

Maxine

Maxine, did you ever find the tiles anywhere?

no I did not fine any thing that I could use.

I am looking for the same tiles as well. I understand that they came in bundles of Ten and I need 6 thanks to a roofer that doesn't work on Saturday. The 1x1 in this pattern is hard to find and discontinued by armstrong but must exist somewhere.