St. Stephen’s gets anonymous donation for renovations

LYNN – It was an anonymous donor who gave the congregation of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church the starting point it needed to tackle Phase I of a $4 million exterior renovation.”Angels sometimes do walk in,” said Rev. Jane Gould.The rounded east wall of the North Common Street church is shrouded in scaffolding as work gets under way on the $500,000 project that makes up Phase I. The plans are to fix faltering mortar joints, repair the tiled roof and replace timber that has rotted due to significant water damage.View a photo gallery of the repairsGould said it was a member of the community who offered to pay for what turned out to be a $45,000 extensive survey of the entire building because he said he felt it was important to the city to save the historic building.The cornerstone of the North Common Street building was laid in 1880. Architect Brett Donham, who is working on the renovation project, called the church one of the finest pieces designed by noted architecture firm Ware and Van Brunt, which also designed Harvard University’s Memorial Hall. But years of water damage is taking its toll.”Water has been getting in, freezing and expanding, and pushing the brick apart from the stone,” Donham said.Inside the damage is much more noticeable. Paint hangs in ruffled strips from the large sandstone arch that spans the altar. The floor of the altar is littered with small pieces of paint and plaster that occasionally drops. Gould said the sandstone arch never should have been painted but since they lack the funds to have it professionally removed it will continue to peel and drop.Because of the exterior damage to the building, when it rains, buckets are put out and plastic sheets are spread across the communion rail to catch the water, she said.”When it’s a nor’easter, it sounds like it’s raining almost as hard in here as it is outside,” she added. “And then there’s the percussion sounds with the rain hitting all the different plastic buckets. There are times we’ve had to do communion standing up.”The disrepair is also discouraging and gives off the illusion that the church community doesn’t care, she said.Restoration Committee member Marilyn Cloran said it took a couple of years just to figure out how to tackle such a huge project but after the anonymous donation came in things got rolling.The study allowed the committee to apply for grants and to launch a capital campaign of its own in conjunction with the Episcopal Diocese where it raised $400,000, Gould said. Coupled with a matching grant, the project was off and running.The property, which is listed in the State Register of Historic Places, has received a matching grant from the Massachusetts Preservation Projects Fund through the Massachusetts Historical Commission, Secretary of the Commonwealth William Francis Galvin, chairman.The money raised will only pay for Phase I, but Chris Trahan, the church warden, said there was no question they would start with repairing the altar.Russ Burtt of Joseph Gnazzo, the contractor heading the project, said the work should be done in about two months.Trahan said theoretically the next phase would include repairing the north facing wall, which has begun to deteriorate such that pews along the wall in the main sanctuary have been roped off.Phase III would be repairing the stonework around a window on the east wall that faces Blossom Street.Gould is excited that the work has started.”It’s been a long time sort of coming to terms with rebuilding, what the building needs and pretty literally jumping into the deep end,” she said. “We don’t want to be a museum. We want to be a church that lives up to its Christian responsibility ? We aren’t just a pretty face, we actually do good work too.”Chris Stevens can be reached at [email protected].