Norway First Universalist Church
Norway UU Church is the kind of church that reminds me why we do this work. The congregation has been hosting a community lunch program for more than 25 years and the building provides a space for daily AA meetings. When I’ve been in the office for weeks, finishing up estimates I know will be shocking, I start to wonder whether all this old building stuff is worth it. What are these places worth anyways? Why save our historic barns and landmark buildings? Off-site, it gets existential.
One of my jobs is to provide an answer to these questions. Frequently, functionality is enough. A big old barn might be easier to repair than to replace and traditional approaches are proven. They last longer. They definitely give the building more life per buck. Intellectually, I’m convinced, but emotionally, I wonder, “Do these buildings really matter, to anyone?”
Norway Unitarian Universalist Church matters. The steeple has anchored Norway, Maine’s Main St for nearly two centuries. The building provides a place for people of all walks of life to gather, in a rural community, where people may love being alone, but also get lonely. In a diverse and sometimes disjointed society, we need welcoming, inspiring spaces like these, where the building reminds us of what we can achieve, and have achieved, when we work together as a community.
Norway UU Tower
We removed the steeple last month. Steeple removals, like all crane days, are exciting, but are tinged with melancholy. Removal is often the first step toward repair, but it’s still hard to dismantle an icon like this one, especially when we don’t know exactly when it will be restored. The steeple has an open belfry, with eight posts and a dome. Initially, we had hoped to save the posts and extract the belfry as a unit. In towers like these, the belfry posts telescope deeply within the tower. At these heights, steeples face powerful wind loads. The tower roof, or bell deck, is a potential hinge point for the tower. The length of post that extends above the tower box is only about half its total height. The belfry posts rest on bed timbers that cross tower girts deep within the tower walls.
Tower and Belfry Framing
Upon further investigation, we confirmed that five of the eight posts were rotted beyond repair. When this many posts are this badly rotted, we know that there is more damage hidden behind the trim and sheathing. Additionally, the tower roof had been re-built three successive times and each set of rafters, sheathing, and shingles was stacked over the last. Woven amongst this framing were a collection of weird posts attempting to stabilize the bell. Despite the beautiful tower and belfry timber framing, the framing below the bell was a mess, making it impossible to discern which timbers were really holding up the bell. There was no way to extract the bell with the dome in place, and there was no way to selectively extract any viable posts, which weren’t likely to exist (spoiler: they didn’t).
Ultimately, we made the tough decision to sever the belfry posts, and began to rig the dome accordingly. I can say, definitively, that we hate cutting posts. We hate doing it as much as we hate finding it done. We barely know the labor that went into extracting these logs from the forest, and hewing them. We know intimately the effort involved in laying out the joinery and cutting it. Cutting joinery is a joy; cutting posts may be made exciting by the adrenaline of a crane day, but is something else entirely.
Dome Crab, stabilized for flight
To prepare for crane day, the crew stabilized the crab, in the ceiling above the bell. The crab is the horizontal grid that connects the tops of the eight belfry posts and supports the half-round dome rafters. It looks like a timber hashtag and this one was #rotten. With 2x10s, we traced the layout of the crab timbers, stacking and blocking the 2x into a grid three layers thick. This stabilizes the crab for flight. Then, the crew used a laser level to establish the exact height of the rigging timbers, and the subsequent line on which we would cut the belfry posts. Early on crane day, the crane flew in the rigging timbers, arranged in another timber hashtag, about 20′ across and extending out the belfry by about three-and-a-half feet. Next, we installed bolsters between the rigging timbers and the stabilized crab, so that the dome would be lifted level. The load must be bottom-heavy, and very stable.
The crane will hold the dome in what is called an 8-point pick. A rigging strap is basketed around the end of each rigging timber, and connects to a custom-built “cage” that hangs from the crane. The cage is a square of heavy-gauge tube steel, with rigging plates at each corner. Two of the rigging timber straps shackle to each plate. Connecting the straps and shackles to the ends of the timbers is a slow and careful process, the shackles need to be oriented properly to ensure that they can’t unscrew during flight, and avoid twist in the straps. Everybody on the crew is focussed, and moving deliberately.
Norway Dome, off it goes
After the dome is rigged, the crane begins to cable-up and take a little weight. The crane will need to lift the dome enough that our reciprocating saw blades don’t bind, but not so much that the dome bounces as the last post is cut. Each person in the belfry was responsible for cutting two posts, as closely to the line as possible and leaving level feet for the dome to rest upon in the yard. Scott was on the radio, communicating directly with Arron and the crane operator on the ground. As we cut through the posts, we drove a wedge into the kerf to keep the kerf open, and to prevent the crane from having to take too much weight.
At every lift like this, one corner “sits hard”. No matter how evenly we’ve rigged the tower, or how centered the ball is over the building, there is always one corner that is heavier, due to the vagaries of wood density and concentrations of pigeon droppings. I was the lucky lady with the heavy corner, which meant that everyone else’s kerfs were open and free while I was still trying to finish my cut. I repeated a pass with my sawzall for the third time, and finally severed the remnant of corner board that was holding us down. The dome lifted gently, with no bounce at all.
The crowd cheered, and we descended for the best lunch I have received in more than a decade of crane days. A crowd had turned up with their lawn chairs, and we were treated to burgers, pulled pork, cole slaw, salads and desserts. A number of building committee members wanted pictures with the crew. We were enveloped in the love they feel for their church, and the enthusiasm they have for their community. On the job site that day, it was easy to understand why these places matter.
Ground Crew View
After the steeple had flown, we were finally able to see just how badly the belfry posts had deteriorated. In a number of places, the posts had been severed at the tower roof, and “secured” with small angle brackets, like you might use to fix your kitchen table. There was no scarf joint connecting the two halves of the “repaired” post, and the fasteners were rusted through. We had planned to extract the bottom halves of the tower posts one at a time, but we were able to push three of the posts over by hand, and lay the partially rotted stumps on the bell deck. The level of deterioration confirmed our decision to sever the posts. It would not have been safe to try and extract them whole. We flew the bell, and carefully demolished the upper layer of roof, upon which the bell had been sitting. We then covered the second roof level with EPDM rubber, wrapping the cornice and securing it to the tower wall with strapping.
Belfry Trim Notes
Next, we will begin the process of more thoroughly documenting and dismantling the dome, saving as much original material as possible. The bell deck will need to be re-framed. The congregation will leverage the grounded dome to finish the fundraising and get to the crane day that will restore the dome to the top of the tower as soon as possible. The congregation at Norway can take heart from East Derry, who, just this past week, hosted a crane day to restore their belfry and lanterns to the top of their 60 foot tower. come back to read about it next week.
Read some excellent Sun Journal coverage here.
