Assistant Town Manager Outlines Urgent Structural Masonry Restoration For Memorial Hall
The name of an architect to design repairs for the town hall will be recommended to the board of selectmen soon, according to Assistant Town Manager Bernie Cooper.
Funds for the repairs were appropriated at the annual town meeting earlier this month.
While repairs to the bell tower have been perhaps the most greatly discussed, there are a number of other problems requiring repair as well, Cooper said.
He said that stonework on all parts of the building is eroding, but that the problem is most pronounced in the tower, where mortar is falling off because of exposure to the elements. He also said roofs repairs will be necessary.
“There are a lot of leaks in Memorial Hall that have been very difficult to find,” he said.
He said work will also have to be done on the building’s gutters and drains.
The wooden arch windows in the bell tower will have to be replaced, Cooper said. “Because the arches have just weathered away. There’s only a paper thin covering left. You can see it in some places from the parking lot.”
As far as the 50-bell carillon, donated to the town in 1928 as a gift by Walter F. Tilton, president of the Norwood Trust Co., is concerned, Cooper said, “There is nothing wrong with the bells themselves.”
“The bellframe structure will have to be repaired,” he said. “Probably the repairs will consist of painting and sandblasting.”
He said that the bells are currently not operational, and have not been for about the past four years.
He said the the stonework, especially the work on the tower, will probably be the most expensive.
“The tower is not about to fall down or anything,” he said.
Cooper said that the work was estimated to cost about $400,000, and that the architect who is chosen to work on the project will “handle bids and specifications” for the work in addition to planning the repairs.
Archival Note: This article has been dynamically reconstructed from the original public record print archives of the Patriot Ledger
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