Long time readers of my blog may remember my post about Hurricane Irene, posted on 31 August 2011, in which I included a photo of the the six-ton bell tower being removed from our Town Hall.  Fortunately, our town eventually received restoration funding totaling $200,000 from federal, state, and local sources, and master carpenter Jeff Samuelson began a project to replicate the original tower.  For the past 16 months, he worked almost exclusively on the restoration at his home in town.  It was a once in a lifetime opportunity, he exclaimed, adding “I can’t think of anything I ever do that will be like this.  If they called me to go to the White House, it wouldn’t mean as much.”

Originally scheduled for yesterday, the restoration of the bell tower finally happened today, from 8 to 11 on this sunny but cool spring morning.  I stood for over three hours at the intersection of North Main and Summer Streets, in a crowd of hundreds of town residents who turned out for the historic occasion.  It was mesmerizing watching the operators control the two cranes which positioned the tower in place.

I haven’t captioned the photos below, because I think they are fairly self-explanatory.  Note that the first step was to install the bell tower, then the gilded, octagonal cupola was lifted in place.  I believe that Jeff is the person wearing the yellow hardhat in the last photo.