Boston– January 23, 2008 – Shawmut Design and Construction (www.shawmut.com), an $800 million national construction management firm headquartered in Boston, recently announced the completion of Phase II of a multi-year historic restoration of The Church of the Advent, an Episcopalian landmark located in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. Shawmut, a renowned leader in historic restoration, worked with expert masons, glass artisans, historians, church staff, parishioners and the community to ensure historic and artistic integrity during construction and to keep the church open throughout the project.
Completed in 2007, Phase II included the restoration of several stained glass windows and the restoration and repair of the stone features of the exterior. Shawmut partnered with Serpentino Stained Glass in Needham, Mass., Cohoes Design Glass Associates in Cohoes, N.Y., and art glass historian Julie Sloan to restore the stained glass windows in the north and south transepts. For this delicate project, extensive documentation of the glass was done in situ before the windows were removed. The windows were then disassembled, cleaned and repaired. Shawmut also repaired the stones holding the windows in place to provide easier access to the windows and place less stress on the glass.
Additionally, Shawmut worked with church parishioners and the neighborhood to replace stone crosses that had sat on the roof peaks above the Brimmer and Mt. Vernon Street entrances before being blown off in a hurricane in the 1950s. A parishioner designed two new crosses and submitted drawings to the Beacon Hill Architectural Commission to ensure compliance with architectural guidelines of this historic district. The crosses were then made from lead-coated copper by Gilbert and Becker Roofing and Sheet Metal Co. and installed above the two entrances by Shawmut.
In Phase I, completed in November 2006, Shawmut worked with Restoration Preservation Masonry Company to restore, repair and clean the Church’s 172-foot bell tower. Shawmut removed damaged stones from the tower and replaced them with precisely matched brick, mortar and Wallace sandstone imported from Nova Scotia. New copper finials were added to replace those worn by weather and age. Two 8-foot x 20-foot stained glass windows, originally crafted in London in 1910 by artist Christopher Whitworth Whall, an important figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement, were also removed for restoration work and reinstalled.
The Church of the Advent staff and parishioners will soon begin the next phase of restoration, which will consist of an extensive cleaning of the church’s interior. Stone, woodwork, copper and glass will all be cleaned of incense soot and other dust accumulated over the past century. Established in 1844, the Church has become a valuable and revered neighborhood landmark and as such, will continue to remain open during the third phase as it did in the first phases. They have established long-running ties with generations of families from eastern Massachusetts creating a diverse, vital, and close-knit parish family - young, old, rich, poor, of various ethnic origins and differing backgrounds. Allowing the Church to remain open will allow for worship services and community activities conducted at the Church to move forward uninterrupted. Further impacting those around them, the Church’s connectedness and devotion inspired members of the Shawmut construction team to become members of the Church themselves.
Shawmut specializes in cultural and historic preservation projects all over New England and was selected to work on the complex Church of the Advent restoration due to its vast experience in historic preservation and restoration, exemplified through its role in the restoration of various high-profile structures including Trinity Church in the City of Boston, Sever Hall, University Hall and Memorial Hall at Harvard University, Boston Children’s Museum, and Newport, Rhode Island’s Touro Synagogue.
