Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 2077
Today we have a photo from nearly 7 years ago. Do you remember when the steeple was taken off the First Parish Church in 2006?
We will soon see the steeple being put back into place. You can visit http://www.firstparishdorchester.org/pages/restoration to see some of the restoration process
The following is from that website: For two semesters, North Bennet Street School Preservation Carpentry students learned about traditional woodworking techniques while restoring 25 sanctuary windows and our beautiful 150′ steeple. Help us say THANK YOU by donating to our Make It Fly Again campaign, and come watch the lift on August 6th (rain date August 7th.)
The following is from the Boston Globe, November 24, 2096 By Charles A. Radin
The lantern room that topped First Parish Church in Dorchester for the past 110 years was lifted off the church’s 150-foot steeple Friday and deposited in a repair area next to the white clapboard building on historic Meetinghouse Hill.
Several dozen parishioners and neighborhood residents chatted for more than two hours as work crews checked and rechecked cables and braces. Then they watched in hushed silence as a crane slowly moved the 40-foot, 10,000-pound structure through the brilliant, late-autumn sunshine.
‘‘I guess the praying worked,’’ master carpenter Daniel Bannon said with a grin as the steeple top, a mass of cracked paint, partially rotted wood, and angles that were no longer plumb, settled on the repair site.
Now, members of the Boston area’s oldest religious community say, all they have to do is raise the money to complete repairs and put it back.
The lantern, a brightly lit, glassed-in room at the top of the steeple, long had made the First Parish a landmark by night as well as day. Congregants still love to talk about how air traffic controllers at Logan International Airport sometimes called if the electric lights went out and ask that they be turned back on for the benefit of incoming pilots.
But in recent years the small octagonal room began slanting noticeably to one side, raising fears it might be toppled by a major storm
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