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Water leaking, material falling from the ceiling. The Big Dig? No, the Massachusetts State House.
During Gov. Romney’s State of the State address on January 13, a lens from one of the more than 70 light fixtures on the ceiling fell to the floor of the House of Representatives, missing several lawmakers only because they were standing for an ovation. “Had Rep. [Jennifer] Flanagan been sitting in her seat, it would have hit her,” says Rep. Thomas O’Brien, who had a good view of the fixture’s descent.
A few weeks later, members of the House were again attacked from above, this time by a bucket of water. An ice dam had formed on the roof after the March 1 blizzard, and it was “not safe to address the problem from the roof,” explains Neil Kilpeck, superintendent of the Bureau of State Offices. As the ice began to melt, water started to leak into the House. The problem was temporarily solved the way William of Ockham would have done it hundreds of years ago: with a bucket. Unfortunately, the bucket got knocked over, spilling on Rep. Shirley Owens-Hicks.
“I didn’t see a bucket fall,” she says. “I felt some water and I just ran out of my seat.”
But House members were not alone in feeling besieged in their surroundings. The Senate was forced to hold four sessions between February 22 and March 3 in the Senate Reading Room while damage to its chamber’s ceiling was being assessed. Last June, a wooden ventilator cover from one of the tiny windows in the ceiling fell and dented the wooden rostrum.
“We are in the process of assessing the maintenance and structural needs of the Senate Chamber,” says Senate President Robert Travaglini. “The State House is an irreplaceable treasure of our state and our nation. I take my responsibility for maintaining the portion of the State House under the jurisdiction of the Senate very seriously.”
Repairs to the leaky House are being taken care of in-house, but the Senate work requires the attentions of Building Conservation Associates, a consulting firm that specializes in restoration and repair of buildings and works of art. When projects inside the State House require “consideration with their historical significance,” the Massachusetts Historical Commission has to be consulted and BCA may be brought in, says Kilpeck.
Brian Powell, a conservator for BCA working out of Dedham, says that the wooden ventilators are made of an early form of plywood. “The Senate dome is original, and the ventilators were added during a major renovation in the 1860s,” says Powell. “The ventilators were installed in 1867, and the plywood [covers] in 1897.”
They have been deteriorating for years, says Powell. “They were subject to extremes, presumably getting a variation in moisture, and the glue had begun to release,” he says.
BCA mostly inspected the Senate ceiling from the floor with a telescope, but also set up a scaffold in one of the corners to get a closer look at the ventilators. Then the firm took two of the ventilator covers back to Dedham to experiment, finding the best ways to treat the damage while maintaining historical accuracy. BCA has also worked on the plaster in the four corners of the chamber and on the scale of justice.
But there is still the larger problem of moisture and leakage that is causing the damage in the building, the oldest parts of which are more than 200 years old. A $42.5 million facelift of the State House exterior was recently completed, but that concentrated on the front columns, restoration of marble, and the re-settling of the ground, which had shifted over time. Kilpeck says another major renovation is in the early planning stage, and the first thing to be addressed is the roof.
“There’s no point in renovation unless you’ve made sure there’s no water penetration,” he says.