With students, faculty, and staff sitting shoulder to shoulder late Wednesday afternoon in Gomes Chapel, President Garry W. Jenkins reminded the �ֲ���ý community of the capacity for human acts to help lift the darkness left in the wake of the Oct. 25 shootings in Lewiston that resulted in the deaths of 18 people. 

“The brightness that shines through the dark of a tragedy such as we have suffered here in Lewiston, our home, is what it always is in times like these: the immense capacity of our shared humanity,” Jenkins said. He called on those gathered — filling the chapel — to continue to support each other.

The Vigil for Grief and Remembrance, presented by the college’s Multifaith Chaplaincy, was held on Nov. 1, the one-week anniversary of the Lewiston shootings. Many �ֲ���ý students had attended a large vigil three days before in downtown Lewiston at the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, but the on-campus vigil offered an opportunity for the �ֲ���ý campus community to grieve and reflect together. 

The mood in the chapel full of students, faculty, and staff was somber. A few held hands. Some in attendance dabbed at their eyes. 

“Let us be a loving community and carry all the things we are feeling and sifting through together,” said the Rev. Brittany Longsdorf, �ֲ���ý’ multifaith chaplain, speaking from the pulpit to the chapel as daylight started to fade. 

People have gathered to grieve for centuries because it’s vital in the healing process, Longsdorf said as she prepared for the vigil earlier in the day. She said this simple, human act of coming together binds us — and also frees us of the guilt that can follow a horrific tragedy. 

“Grieving together is essential to come out of this hard moment. That’s why societies have done things like this vigil for thousands of years,” said Longsdorf. “When you see other people in that space, it helps us lean into it in a special way. I think doing it together, it’s why at �ֲ���ý we love Lewiston, and why Lewiston loves on us. We love this city that is our home.”

In his remarks, �ֲ���ý’ new president also offered his vision for the way forward — a journey made together that is guided by love: 

“Generosity and care and eagerness to help, to support, to embrace have emanated from every corner of this city and this college community like a beacon of light, filling our hearts and mending our souls,” Jenkins said. “They remind us of human goodness. They remind us to hold onto hope. They remind us that together, over time, we will recover and heal. In that, I have faith.”

Lewiston mayor Carl Sheline echoed that oath of togetherness. Sheline, who said he was on campus by chance on Oct. 25 when the shootings occurred, promised those gathered: “We will rise together.”

“Most of you, like me, are from away, but while you are here, you belong to us. Lewiston is your city, just as we are sharing in this tragedy,” Sheline said. “We are not going through separate events, but the same dark time.”

The Lewiston community and �ֲ���ý students “will stand shoulder to shoulder” Sheline said, as the area works to heal.

Watch the full video of the Vigil for Grief and Remembrance at the Gomes Chapel on Nov. 1:

In her remarks in the chapel, Longsdorf spoke of the power of sharing grief as a community.

“Some may think that grieving is weak, or a form of surrender. But I believe that grief is a form of rest and a method of love. When we grieve together like this, in community, we powerfully hold each other and are held. When we grieve, we continue loving amidst loss. When we remember, we root to purpose and commit to change. When we remember, we connect the threads of the dead to how we still want to live our one precious life.”

The vigil continued as Longsdorf, with a suede-covered mallet, rimmed a singing bowl, creating a continuous and harmonious sound to open up space for those in attendance to turn to each other and share a few words about how they were feeling. For many, the fear and shock had passed, to be replaced with sorrow, exhaustion, and gratitude for being in community. And safe. 

Then, following a musical interlude, the Rev. Raymond Clothier, associate multifaith chaplain, read the names of the 18 people killed in the shooting, pausing between each name, while Longsdorf lightly struck the suede-covered mallet on the singing bowl’s rim, creating a single sustained musical note for each.

Behind Clothier and Longsdorf, displayed on a table covered with a white cloth, were framed photos of the victims.

Tricia C. Asselin.

Peyton Brewer-Ross.

William Frank Brackett.

Thomas Ryan Conrad.

Michael R. Deslauriers.

Maxx A. Hathaway.

Bryan M. McFarlane.

Keith D. Macnear.

Ronald G. Morin.

Joshua A. Seal.

Arthur Fred Strout.

Stephen M. Vozzella.

Lucille M. Violette.

Robert E. Violette.

Joseph Lawrence Walker.

Jason Adam Walker.

William A. Young.

Aaron Young. 

It took nearly four minutes to read all the names. Then Clothier asked the gathered crowd to hold a minute of silence, for these “beloveds” and those injured or left behind. “May their memories guide us forward in love,” he said.  

On the way into Gomes, attendees had been given unlit candles to hold. Longsdorf brought a flame from the candles of remembrance on the altar to the first row, and participants in the front row passed it back, the light spreading quickly.

The vigil included two songs performed by singer-guitarists Barry Kilmister ’24 of Poway, Calif., and Levi Mindlin ’24 of Portland, Ore., and, later, haunting music played by student cellist Eli Kushner ’24 of Philadelphia. Eight others read prayers, palms, and poems. 

Aneeza Ahmad ’25 of Sharon, Mass., and Alaina Rauf ’25 of Yarmouth, Maine, who are both members of the �ֲ���ý Muslim Student Association, read prayers from the Islamic faith to offer hope and solace. 

“Like all of you, we are so saddened and heartbroken about the recent events that have taken place in our home of Lewiston,” Ahmad began. “At the same time, we are so, so grateful to have a community and to be part of a community that has held each other’s hands and endured this really difficult moment together.”

“This fear will not resolve soon, nor will the emotions subside. That is the burden of our generation. And yet we continue the fight, and we will continue to respond.”

Ethan Baker ’24 reading his poem “The North Star of Maine”

Candlelight filled Gomes by the time the venerable Tenzin Dasel ’88, a volunteer spiritual advisor to the �ֲ���ý community and the founder of the Maine Mindfulness Project, welcomed those gathered, calling them “precious �ֲ���ý and Lewiston community.” She read from the Dalai Lama’s daily prayer, which reverberated with images of hope and prayers for peace everywhere.

Students, staff, and faculty cradled their candles as Ethan Baker ’24 of Jackson, N.H., walked to the podium and offered a personal prayer in the form of a poem he wrote the morning after the shootings, after he experienced the aftermath as a first responder with the �ֲ���ý Emergency Medical Services.

Baker was still on duty when he wrote a poem he titled “The North Star of Maine.” The poem concluded:

This fear will not resolve soon, nor will the emotions subside. That is the burden of our generation. And yet we continue the fight, and we will continue to respond.

May the power of patience, kindness, and love allow us to find peace in ourselves, in our community, and together we remember those souls who left us for the North Star of Maine.

Completed this year after two decades of planning and construction, �ֲ���ý’ restoration of the exterior and the signature stained-glass windows of the Peter J. Gomes Chapel has been recognized by a statewide historic preservation organization.

The 2020 is not only a feather in the college’s cap but a lifetime-achievement award of sorts for Jim Nutting ’76, who restored most of the stained glass.

“That’s one of my legacies,” says Nutting, who points out that he married his first wife, also a �ֲ���ý graduate, in the chapel. He rebuilt nine of the chapel’s 10 large decorative windows, eight of which date from the mid-1930s and depict influential figures in Western history. (One of those, featuring poet Dante Alighieri and artist Fra Angelico, was rebuilt as a pilot project by a different contractor circa 2012.)

The work will “stand for 100 years or more,” says an understandably proud Nutting, who has done stained-glass work since the 1970s and went full time in 1997. He does business as down the road from �ֲ���ý in the town of Lisbon Falls.

Aside from the Dante–Fra Angelico panel, “I did absolutely every speck” of rebuilding the Gomes glass panels, says Nutting.“It was an honor. I’m so proud to have been involved.”

“Jim was the right person for the job,” says Pam Wichroski, �ֲ���ý’ director of capital planning and construction. “We were lucky to find him.” She adds, “It’s always good to have a �ֲ���ý alum involved.”

“The beauty of stained glass is hard to match,” says Nutting. “You can look at all the architecture and fancy woodwork, but the glass jumps out at you, because it lets the light through and the colors. It’s exciting.”

Nutting took a course in making stained glass soon after graduating from �ֲ���ý with a biology major. (He has a Butterfly and Insect Museum alongside his studio and retail store in the former St. Cyril and St. Methodius Church in downtown Lisbon Falls.) He took up glass work full time after 25 years at Central Maine Medical Center, where he started as a dishwasher while still at �ֲ���ý and rose to the post of corporate fundraiser.

For major projects, Nutting partners with Matt Kendall, whose handles business arrangements and field installation while Nutting focuses on the glass art itself.

Consigli Construction, which assumed management of the Gomes project early on, asked the pair to complete the stained glass after a prior contractor dropped out. The project was the largest Nutting has ever taken on. “I might not have undertaken it if I’d been by myself,” he says.

“We were talking about performing a miracle in nine, 10 months.” The work would include cleaning usable original glass, finding and cutting new glass to replace broken pieces, and replacing structural components, notably the “came,” the metal strips that hold the glass bits.

But they made it happen. “Seeing how great a team they were to work with and how seamless the transition was, it was nothing short of a fantastic experience with them,” says Nate Berry, Consigli’s project manager for the Gomes work.

For both the glass team and Consigli’s masons (the company’s masonry expertise goes back to its founding in 1905), particular challenges came with replacing the window traceries, ornate components in cast stone (a refined form of concrete) that hold the glass assemblies.

The tracery replicas were products of state-of-the-art technology, but the process also produced that rare phenomenon: the perfect being the enemy of the perfect. The dimensions of the new traceries were more uniform than the window openings, which had shifted over years of exposure to the elements. That necessitated some assiduous tweaking in both the glass studio and the chapel.

The stained-glass panels, though rebuilt to specification, needed subsequent size adjustments. They also had to be partially disassembled — as Nutting casually puts it, “broken” — and fitted section by section into the traceries.

Meanwhile, Consigli masonry foreman Keith Lyford put his 40 years of experience to work finding ways to fit the traceries to their window openings. “That was one of the biggest conflicts we had to work through, but with the expertise of Keith and his team, it wasn’t anything that we couldn’t overcome,” says Berry.

The Gomes restoration has been on Wichroski’s radar more or less since 2000 and her arrival at �ֲ���ý as a Facility Services project manager. Having it done “feels wonderful,” she says. “I’ll no longer walk around the chapel just cringing at the continued deterioration.”

She was �ֲ���ý’ first project manager for the chapel, but not the last — that would be Shelby Burgau, who started at �ֲ���ý in 2017. “She’s very hands-on, very detailed, so she was great at working closely with the Consigli team and monitoring their progress,” Wichroski says.

As Burgau herself says, “The chapel means so much to so many people — I feel really proud that we were able to restore its structural integrity and original beauty so that people can continue to enjoy it for another century-plus.”

�ֲ���ý’ Honor Award was one of 12 given for building projects. (It’s �ֲ���ý’ second such accolade from Maine Preservation: The first recognized the college’s transformation of Hedge and Roger Williams halls into academic buildings.) And the honor, says Wichroski, validates the college’s decision to take the high road in refurbishing the 1913 chapel, hewing as closely as possible to the original aesthetic and functional goals for the building.

As for Nutting, he made sure that his and Kendall’s contributions would be remembered, signing their names in glass on one panel and dating it. Nutting says that he feels “a lot of affinity towards the college. I’ve always been proud to have graduated from �ֲ���ý.”

Winning the bronze metal: The next time you wander up Bardwell Street toward �ֲ���ý, you’ll be able to see with your own eyes evidence of the biggest news in the construction of the Bonney Science Center.

Hahnel Brothers employees place Revere ContinentalBronze roofing panels, at right, on the southeast corner of the Bonney building. Nearby are exhaust stacks for boilers in the penthouse. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Washing brickwork on the science center’s south wall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The design of these new tiles in a Bonney center bathroom has some fun with geometry. The red items at the top are spacers that maintain the specified gap between tiles until grout is applied. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

If if weren’t for all the lifts bearing workers, this view of the Bonney Science Center’s south wall might convince you that the building’s about done. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

A massive sheaf of plans dominates a third-floor chemistry lab. The attractive blue film on the air ducts keeps contaminants out. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Metal staging, window framing, and wall studs form a complex grid against a backdrop of translucent plastic in the Bonney Science Center’s Beacon. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Signs of the times. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Now completely sheathed in brick, the south wall of the Bonney center is shown early on Dec. 2, 2020. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Located in the Bonney center penthouse, the blue boilers at left will heat water for both domestic use (handwashing, soaking decals prior to application, etc.) and space heating. At right is a battery of water pumps. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The Muskie Archives is visible from this third-floor classroom through a gap in the poly window covering. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The green and gray around this first-floor doorway are finish coats of paint. The “peach” is actually white primer, color-shifted by the camera. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

A northwestern view of the Bonney center with the sun rising at left. The “tent” above the site fence tells you that bricklaying has begun on the Campus Avenue face of the building: This poly enclosure will help keep mortar warm enough to cure properly. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Atop the building at the right-hand corner, placement has begun of the final layer of roofing: dark gray panels of a product called ContinentalBronze, manufactured by Revere Copper Products of Rome, N.Y.

Roofers for Hahnel Brothers of Lewiston began laying the pre-oxidized copper roof covering last week. Because of its underlying structure, drainage system, and contours, the roof overall is complex enough that constructing it has been meticulously planned — and recent revisions to that planning cleared the way for the ContinentalBronze work.

Back in July, we told you about the Bonney stormwater gutters, a sophisticated setup that will route runoff into the building for discharge into city storm pipes. And as the project team pondered gutters and roof, they found ways to make the installation of the two systems less interdependent.

“The short story is that now they can put the roof on first and go to town with that, and finish the gutter second,” explains Chris Streifel, �ֲ���ý project manager in charge of Bonney. The original plan was to build the gutters first. Another important revision was to the mechanism that will join the roof and gutters.

Those changes will simplify and speed construction, but that’s not the only upside. “It’s great for �ֲ���ý long-term, because in my estimation, the first thing that we’ll need to do service on, during the potential 50- to 100-year lifespan of the roof, is going to be those gutters,” Streifel says.

That first section of ContinentalBronze should be finished by early next week, and you’ll get an even better view if you stand on top of your car or on a stepladder. (Campus Construction Update, in fact, never leaves the office without a stepladder and, of course, a mask).

While work inside the science center continues full tilt, the other news headlines involve the building envelope, or as the experts say, the outside of it. Arriving on the day before Thanksgiving was all the glass, cut to order, for the building’s three glass “curtain walls.” O&P Glass of Augusta, Maine, will start installing glass on one of those features, called the Beacon, any day now.

Meanwhile, near the Beacon, bricklayers for Maine Masonry have gotten to work on the Campus Avenue side of the building — their last for this project. There’s still brick work to finish on the Bardwell Street side, but the south and west faces are fully bricky.

“It’s looking great, especially if you’re coming up Nichols Street,” Streifel says. From that direction, “everything you can see looks finished. It’s wonderful.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes queries and comments about current, past, future, and imaginary construction at �ֲ���ý. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting “Campus Construction” or “What have the ladder people got on you?” in the subject line.

After a 22-month closure for exterior restoration, including 13 months behind a green construction fence, a �ֲ���ý College landmark will again welcome the campus community — subject, of course, to COVID-19 precautions — starting sometime in August.

The Peter J. Gomes Chapel will return to service (or, if you like, services will return to the chapel) following a restoration project that has included:

• substantial rebuilding of the signature stone portico that shelters the main entrance;
• rehabilitation of exterior masonry on all four walls;
• the addition of an accessible restroom;
• complete replacement of the window traceries, those curling concrete tendrils that embellish windows and portico;
• and the thorough rebuilding of the chapel’s decorative stained glass windows.

“Gomes Chapel is re-opening, in all of its beauty and sanctity, amidst a powerful moment of need for sacred space,” says the Rev. Dr. Brittany Longsdorf, �ֲ���ý’ multifaith chaplain. “In a time where members of our community are seeking spaces that are spiritual, centering, quiet — and screenless — more than ever before, we envision the historic Gomes Chapel entering into a renaissance period embraced by our campus in new and creative ways.

“May all feel warmly welcomed there.”

Like it’s been there 1,000 years: The Peter J. Gomes Chapel through June foliage on the Historic Quad. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Shown on June 8, staging and protective tarps conceal the opening for the stained glass window at the north wall of the Gomes Chapel. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Seen from the rear gallery on June 8, at center is the Gomes Chapel chancel with its stained glass window out for restoration and staging in place. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Plastic sheets protect one of the chapel’s two organs (including the pipes on the facade of the rear gallery) from dust raised during the renovation. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Staging at the chapel’s south window in early June. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The newly restored Aristotle, seen from outside Gomes Chapel on June 22. (Doug Huibley/�ֲ���ý College)

Newly restored by Maine Art Glass of Lisbon, Maine, here’s Aristotle seen from the inside. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Taken in April, this view of Gomes Chapel’s south facade shows staging that workers are using to get at the large decorative window that has been restored this year. (Courtesy of Consigli Construction)

As we’ve reported, construction management firm Consigli Construction has most recently focused on the north and south faces of the chapel. The south wall, looking down College Street toward downtown Lewiston, is the location of the portico and a large non-pictorial window. (Interior views of that window are largely blocked by the chapel’s primary organ, the 36-stop Wolff instrument installed in the choir loft in 1982. A second, smaller organ sits behind the altar.)

Most of the decorative windows have been rebuilt by Jim Nutting ’76 of Lisbon, Maine, known for his original creations under the brand.

Nutting started working with glass the year after he graduated from �ֲ���ý and has been doing it full time since 1999. “I always admired stained glass,” he says. “And I love the colors — the color was always exciting to me.”

A biology major, “I took one art class and that was with professor [Donald] Lent, when he was there. One of the few A’s I got at �ֲ���ý.”

Where Nutting’s focus is on the glass, Matthew Kendall handles the field work for the pair’s restoration projects, doing business as Vintage Glass Works. They have collaborated on such projects for a couple of years. “I’m more on the job site, whereas Jim is more in the studio,” Kendall explains. “He’s more the artist, I’m more the contractor.”

Reinstalling a rebuilt work of stained glass poses its own painstaking demands. “You’re doing restoration work based on a set of plans…and hoping that what you’ve created in a shop environment fits an opening that hasn’t even been constructed yet,” explains Kendall, who will likely finish installing the restored south window this week. “So it’s a little unconventional in that process.”

Yet, he adds, “we’re obviously very close to being done with the project — so, so far so good.”

Masons and other trades for Consigli will complete the new portico roof once the staging for the window has been taken down. Through July, work on the portico railings and steps will conclude the portico restoration. Steps for the chapel’s side entrances will be replaced at the same time.

Normally the north wall is dominated by a large, mind-bendingly intricate chancel window that, in stained and hand-painted glass, portrays Christ as the Lamb of God, flanked by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Consigli masons are now prepping the window opening for the return of the restored glass in mid- or late July. “They will begin placing the sill stones and tracery next week,” says Shelby Burgau, the �ֲ���ý project manager overseeing the work.

Nutting points out that the north window stands out from the other stained glass in Gomes. In particular, the nave windows with their formative figures of Western Civ have been quite consistent: “We’ve had basically six or seven different colors of glass that we’ve been working with. Other than the intricate detail of the characters in there, all of the matrix glass has been pretty uniform throughout,” he says. (He has also replaced all the original zinc strips that hold the glass pieces together — strips known as “came” — with the more traditional lead.)

But the north window “is totally different than all the rest,” he says. “Every single piece of glass in that entire window system” — totaling in the thousands, in fact — “has been painted. So any of the broken pieces that we have to replace, I will also have to paint and fire them in the kiln. The replacement of any glass is going to be a lot trickier.”

“But I’m pretty optimistic. I think it’ll work out pretty well.”

Once the big window is back in place, there will remain the task of re-installing the decorative woodwork around it in the chancel, including carved figures of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas that have been loitering in the nave awaiting their homecoming. Consigli will be bringing in specialty carpenters for that.

Exterior masonry repairs on the north and south walls were done by mid-June. And the final steps in the Gomes restoration will be a professional cleaning of the interior and, once the construction fence has been taken down, tidying up the lawn and plantings around the building.

The project just ending is the second in a two-phase restoration of the 1913 chapel’s exterior. The first phase took place nearly a decade ago and was concentrated on the building’s roof and turrets (although one stained glass window, on the College Street side of the building, was rebuilt as a demonstration project at that time). Both phases were necessitated by the forces of time and penetrating moisture.

The chapel was inspired by the 15th-century King’s College Chapel at Cambridge University and named for the late Rev. Peter J. Gomes ’65, a larger-than-life cultural presence among the �ֲ���ý and Harvard communities. The building’s closure in 2018 left the campus without not only a sanctuary for religious expression, but a venue for some of its highest-profile events — notably the worship service and the keynote address that are key to �ֲ���ý’ Martin Luther King Jr. Day programming.

The chapel also sends important visual messages. By pointing its main entrance toward downtown and showing a (usually) unconcealed western wall to College Street, just steps away, it tells the greater community: Welcome. But on the Historic Quad side, partially screened by lush old trees and settled into its place like it’s been there 1,000 years, it tells the �ֲ���ý community: Here you’re safe to be who you are.

That said, policies regarding use of the facility in the context of the coronavirus pandemic are still in development. “We’re still working out our strategy for social distancing in the chapel in the fall — it’s a long process,” says Longsdorf. “We’re collaborating with the Dining, Conferences, and Campus Events office, as the space will likely be used by other groups and classes in a way it hasn’t before.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes your questions and comments about current, past, future, and current campus improvements. Please e-mail news writer Doug Hubley, stating “Construction Update” or “Goethe really rocks the smoking jacket!” in the subject line.

Gathered once again in the Peter J. Gomes Chapel are 20 historical figures who in the 1930s and ’40s were regarded as leading lights of Western civilization. 

Pun intended: From Marie Curie all the way back to Homer, these artists, scientists, and theorists appear as stained-glass depictions that grace eight ornate windows in the side walls of the nave. As part of a larger chapel project that’s still underway, seven of the eight were removed in 2018 for restoration. (Remaining in place were poet Dante Alighieri and painter Fra Angelico, which were restored previously.)

And now they’re back. The glass work was completed during the winter by Vintage Glass Works of Lisbon Falls, Maine. Jim Nutting ’76, also known for his original creations with Maine Art Glass, rebuilt the stained-glass panels, which were installed by Matthew Kendall in conjunction with Consigli.

It was strange to have those figures gone. Raymond Clothier, associate multifaith chaplain, missed the sheer aesthetics of the glass, he says. 

“During difficult times in my years at �ֲ���ý, I’ve found solace by sitting in the chapel and watching the early morning light stream through the stained-glass windows,” he says. “The richness of the color on the old wood makes the place feel alive to me, and I imagine all of the lives that have been touched by this place.”

In another, more-down-to-earth Gomes Chapel headline, the renovation will also equip the building with its first accessible restroom. An anteroom at the rear of the building on the College Street side, where the accessible chapel entrance is located, will be converted into the new comfort station.

“Adding an accessible bathroom to the historic chapel is not only absolutely necessary but is also an offering of compassion and hospitality,” says Multifaith Chaplain Brittany Longsdorf. “When we update various buildings on our campus and prioritize adding accessible elements, we’re saying, ‘All are welcome here.’”

She says, “Gomes Chapel is used for several campus-wide and public-facing events — Orientation, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, memorials, Lessons and Carols, weddings, and Reunions. It’s wonderful that the chapel can now be a more comfortable place for everybody and every body.”

Meanwhile, on the outside, the focus of the restoration has shifted to the building’s end walls, facing Alumni Walk to the north and downtown Lewiston to the south, respectively. Both require repair or replacement of exterior masonry, as we saw during much of last year on the east and west walls — notably repointing mortar and attending to deteriorating cast stone.

Of course, the southern facade is the location of the building’s elaborate main entrance, a portico that was partially rebuilt last year. What remains to be done? With the walls essentially complete, says Burgau, the concrete “landing and stairs still need to be recast, and the roof installed.”

But those measures will come late in the project, following the removal, restoration, and reinstallation of the large, decorative south windows and their traceries — the ornate cast stone frames that retain and embellish the glass. With staging now conspicuously present, that window work has begun. 

The north window, a large and finely detailed depiction of Christ as the Lamb of God and disciples Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, will come out next.

Keep your distance: In the era of COVID-19, Campus Construction Update has taken social distancing to heart. While 6 feet is the recommended gap between oneself and other humans, we are exercising an abundance of caution and staying 34 miles away from campus. The powerful telephoto lens on our camera (plus the photographic generosity of people at the scene) enables us to continue CCU coverage.

But how is Consigli Construction, which is managing the restoration of Gomes Chapel and the building of the Bonney Science Center for �ֲ���ý, balancing the demands of good health with construction deadlines? (.)

According to Nate Berry, the firm’s assistant project manager for the Gomes project, the company has provided additional facilities for workers to wash and sanitize their hands, and is promoting the wearing of masks and gloves, as well as staying 6 feet apart when tasks permit. And daily “toolbox talk” briefings help keep everyone on site cognizant of these precautions.

Final preparations are underway just before concrete flows to complete the third-story floor slab at the Bonney building. (Jacob Kendall/�ֲ���ý College)

Concrete workers use riding trowels to smooth and condition freshly placed concrete on the third floor of the Bonney Science Center. (Jacob Kendall/�ֲ���ý College)

One of three air handlers shoehorned into the Bonney Science Center basement on April 3. Two are this size and the third, which will serve only the vivarium in the basement, is smaller. (Geoffrey Swift/�ֲ���ý College)

Now and then: A rendering of the Bonney Science Center is dwarfed by the building itself, seen from the intersection of Campus Avenue and, at right, Nichols Street. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

A Lull-style forklift totes a section of Symons wall form down Bardwell Street toward the Bonney Science Center service area. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Seen from Nichols Street on March 25, Symons concrete forms are appearing for the west and south third-story walls of the Bonney Science Center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Concrete curing blankets are stored in readiness for use on the third-story walls of the Bonney Science Center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Structural steel and a few concrete wall forms are shown in this northeast view of the science center taken March 25, 2020. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

And here’s roughly the equivalent view roughly a year earlier, in early March 2019. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Floor it: Across the Historic Quad at the Bonney Science Center site, the winter-long accretion of steel and concrete into walls and floors is reaching a crescendo.

The concrete pumper, with its long and weirdly extensible arm, has been placing sections of the third-story wall last week and this week, and on Monday last, it finished off the third-story floor slab. 

Once the wall around the building’s western half has firmed up and the Symons wall forms are peeled off, the steel erectors working for Precision Steel of Sainte-Marie, Quebec, will return to start hanging floor joists for the Bonney penthouse. That could be as soon as April 20.

And by the next time we report to you, likely on May 8, installation of the penthouse floor decking should be in progress, says Chris Streifel, Facility Services project manager for the Bonney Science Center. “The third-floor walls should be close to complete, if not complete, and the penthouse slabs are going to be either partly done or on the near horizon.”

The Bonney building penthouse is a partial fourth story that will contain mechanical equipment and other building services.

Speaking of mechanical equipment, but shifting from penthouse to basement, we were too socially distant last week to observe the delicate job of lowering two bus-sized air handlers, plus a smaller third unit, into Bonney’s cellar. That job relied on the crane and rigging expertise of Cote Corporation, based in Auburn, Maine.

Access to the basement for big heavy stuff is through the so-called areaway, which will ultimately serve as the science center’s air intake. Located at the back of the building, it’s a long, deep, and narrow concrete shaft that opens into the basement at a right angle. Maneuvering an expensive bus-like object down and around and in must have resembled building a ship in a bottle. It’s something we’d love to have seen.

The two bigger units “were a very, very close fit, which was expected,” says Streifel. “It’s nice that it worked out just the way that it was planned to.”

The air handlers joined a couple of laboratory-grade water treatment systems, one for purification and another for pH adjustment, necessitated by the Bonney center’s mission as a science center (a mission that also demands the high-capacity air handling plant, as interior air will be continuously refreshed.)

“That wraps up the majority of the big equipment for the basement,” with an additional filtration system on the way, says Streifel. “Now that the big pieces of equipment are there, they can set those up and then start running everything to them.

“There’s still a tremendous amount of the infrastructure to go in, all the ductwork and piping. There are some massive ducts that have to be connected to those massive air handlers,” in a dense and complex arrangement of ducts overlaid on ducts (which somehow puts us in mind of waterfowl on the spring-green banks of Lake Andrews).

“More and more ductwork, electrical, piping moving ever higher.”

Up on the first floor, walls are being framed out and rough-ins for utilities — the pros call them “MEP,” for mechanical, electrical, and plumbing — are being installed. Soon those activities will expand to the second floor, where wall layouts are already being marked out. 

“Now that the third-floor deck is in place, the inside can be buttoned up and sealed in so they can do more work on the second floor, more work on the first floor,” Streifel says. “It’ll just be more and more of everything inside — more and more ductwork, electrical, piping moving ever higher.”

Finally, while COVID-19 curtailments on rambling around have drained the urgency from traffic reports, we’ll stick to CCU tradition (take comfort where you find it, yes?) and let you know about a few street closures near the Bonney site. Nichols Street will be closed part of next week for the implanting of underground data conduits, and electrical work will shut down Bardwell Street during the week of the 20th. 

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes your questions and comments about current, past, future, and current construction at �ֲ���ý. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting “Campus Construction” or “Social distancing is no hardship for you, is it, Campus Construction Update?” in the subject line.

Since winter arrived, progress on the restoration of the Peter J. Gomes Chapel has taken place mostly out of the public eye, concealed within the chapel’s gray granite walls and the gray plywood and poly sheeting that cover the window openings.

It’s been good progress on the inside. The biggest news involves the building’s prominent stained glass windows on the east and west walls, seven pictorial groupings in all, which were dismantled for extensive repair last year. (An eighth window on the western or College Street side, depicting poet Dante Alighieri and artist Fra Angelico, was restored during an earlier phase of renovation and has remained in place through the current project.)

The repair involves both the stained glass windows themselves and the ornate concrete frames, known as traceries, that both hold the windows and give them still more visual pizzazz.

Hey bop-a-rebar: Concrete reinforcement bars, aka rebar, dominate this interior view of a new section of wall at the science center in December. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Workers prepare a concrete form for removal from a new section of the Bonney Science Center's north wall on Dec. 17. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Then and now: The actual Bonney Science Center looms behind a rendering of the finished building, scheduled to open in September 2021. At center is a massive, complex steel piece that workers placed on or around Jan. 9. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Plastic sheeting and plywood protect the Gomes Chapel window openings while the stained-glass windows are being restored. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The Gomes Chapel portico, still awaiting a new roof, is wrapped up tight in poly sheeting till spring. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The tracery work was finished in December. It was a high-tech process that involved making three-dimensional digital scans of the traceries, creating molds from the scans, and casting replicas of the originals. Now, with the replicas in place, all that’s left is for a wall craftsman for Consigli Construction, the firm leading the restoration, to repair paint and plaster that was disturbed during the project. That’s happening now.

As for the stained glass, the original panels have been rebuilt and their re-installation is underway. (As a refresher for readers who, like Campus Construction Update, like to dazzle friends with arcane construction terms, the glass panels are secured into channels in the tracery edges that are called rabbets.)

The glass work is in the hands of Vintage Glass Works of Lisbon Falls, Maine, who took over the job from the original subcontractor. Jim Nutting ’76, also known for his original creations with Maine Art Glass, has rebuilt the glass panels, and the installation is being done by Matthew Kendall.

Restored stained-glass elements ready for installation in a Gomes Chapel window. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Kendall will be zigzagging back and forth between those east and west windows. A large arched unit on the east, facing the Historic Quad, is partially in place and can be finished now that an order of metal supports has arrived. Restoration of a western window has also begun, explains Shelby Burgau, who manages the Gomes project for �ֲ���ý Facility Services.

But after a certain point the emphasis will be back on the eastern glass, so that the chapel can show its best face to the Historic Quad for Commencement, on May 31. In any case, the east and west windows will be essentially done by summer. Exterior masonry work on those walls was wrapped up in December.

Then Consigli masons and Vintage Glass artisans will turn their attentions to the north and south exterior walls and windows.

Plastic sheeting and plywood protect the Gomes Chapel window openings while the stained-glass windows are being restored. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

There’s one major ornamental window in each of those walls, and the southern specimen will be removed first. But the northern window will be by far the more complicated restoration job, as it involves lots of small glass elements, many of them hand-painted. The removal and reinstallation require a close collaboration between Matt Kendall and Consigli masonry foreman Keith Lyford.

Speaking of traceries, another milestone has been passed in the renewal of the portico that shelters the building’s main entrance: The two traceries that embellish its unglazed side windows have been replaced. Now swathed in poly sheeting, the portico awaits only a new roof and steps. These will come along next summer.

Now you see it, now you don’t: Building the first-story walls at the Bonney Science Center hasn’t been an erratic process, but one might be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

Taken from the third-floor of Chu Hall, facing the Bonney construction site from the east, this Jan. 7 view shows 137 Nichols St. being demolished at center and, nearer the camera, rodbusters assembling rebar for new wall sections at Bonney. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Where you’d expect the concrete wall to arise in an orderly and contiguous progression around the floor-slab perimeter, sections of wall instead have appeared at seemingly random intervals. There’s a long stretch of wall along the Campus Avenue side — but not the whole side. There’s a corner wall here and a corner there, but not at all four corners.

In fact, Campus Construction Update knows all about erratic, and what looks like a start-and-stop approach has actually been the construction team building walls at top speed.

“They wanted to get these walls going as soon as they could,” explains �ֲ���ý project manager Chris Streifel. “The intent is to work consistently in one direction all the way around,” but wherever walls can’t yet be placed, “they’ve skipped and moved on to other areas.”

There are different reasons for the gaps, but a salient issue has to do with the building’s three entrances — one facing Campus Avenue, another on Nichols Street, and the third at the back or south side. Additional structure is needed around the entranceways, both above (such as a conspicuously complex and heavy steel fabrication that was finally installed the other day after weeks on the site) and beneath, where the entrances cross the foundation wall.

The excavator’s claw unveiled a second-story kitchen sink during the razing of 137 Nichols St. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

“We’ll come back and fill those wall gaps in the next few days,” Streifel said this week. “And my expectation is that when they get to the second and third floors, they’ll be able to go all the way around. It should be less hopping, skipping and jumping.” (And less confusion for Campus Construction Update!)

At any rate, enough wall was in place by the first full week of 2020 that steel workers from Davis Erectors, Sainte-Marie, Quebec, were back at Bonney by Wednesday to start spanning the wall-tops at the Nichols Street end of the building with joists that will support the second-story floor slab.

It’s a conservative estimate, Streifel allows, but he thinks that by the end of the month the first-story walls and the steelwork will be far enough along that floor decking for the second level can be laid. As we’ve described previously, the winter’s progress at Bonney will be kind of a chase as walls rise, steel is hung, floors are poured and the roundelay begins again, or at least up through the third and topmost level.

After the second-story concrete floor slab has been placed, Streifel adds, a thorough round of temporary weatherproofing will occur — meaning that poly membranes and other materials will be applied to seal up places where the elements can intrude.

“Then they’ll be able to start some of the mechanical installations, interior wall framing, and drywall work in the basement,” he says. “There’s a ton of work there, especially from an infrastructure standpoint. So that’ll be the next phase and I’m not expecting that until sometime in late February.”

While new walls are ascending at 45 Campus Ave., aka the science center, an old set of walls came down with a crash on Jan. 7. These were the walls of 137 Nichols St., a house adjacent to the Bonney construction site. (We fondly remember salving our writer’s block by gazing down at the old white house from the Campus Construction Update penthouse at 141 Nichols, now the location of storage units serving the Bonney project.)

A view into the Bonney Science Center from Campus Avenue on Jan. 6, 2020. The house framed by the doorway, 137 Nichols St., was torn down the following day. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The college bought the 119-year-old residence a few years ago, and when it became vacant last year, razing No. 137 was the logical course. That’s partly because of the investment that would be required to keep it serviceable, and partly because of its close proximity to the Bonney site, literally three or four feet away.

That site is just barely big enough (and has, at times, not been big enough) for all that needs to be done and stored there, so part of the 137 Nichols lot, which totals around 9,500 square feet, will be turned over to the firm managing the Bonney construction, Consigli Construction of Portland, Maine.

“I don’t know exactly how they’ll use it,” Streifel says, “but it’ll give them some much-needed relief.”

And in the long run, the open space will provide some visual relief, or breathing room as Streifel puts it, for the neighborhood along the south side of �ֲ���ý’ new multimillion-dollar science center.

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes your questions and comments about current, past, future, and current construction at �ֲ���ý. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting “Campus Construction” or “Where is that crazy rabbet?” in the subject line.

Getting Here From There Dept.: The next few weeks are bringing partial closures of the two side streets — Bardwell to the east, followed by Nichols to the west — that flank the Bonney Science Center construction site.

The closures will affect only the stretches of each street adjacent to the site, where they intersect with Campus Avenue.

In fact, that end of Bardwell has been closed since last week, on account of a giant crane in the middle of it. Even bigger than the crane that subcontractor H.B. Fleming brought up in June, the second unit has joined the first in driving so-called pipe piles that will help support the building foundation.

At the moment the crane-come-lately is assigned to driving piles at the east and west ends of the site. The job, though, is a bit different from what’s gone before, as Consigli Construction, the firm overseeing the project for �ֲ���ý, has in effect opened a second front.

Russ Dillingham, chief photographer for the Lewiston Sun Journal, captured this aerial image of the Bonney work site on Aug. 1. “I launched the drone for these photos from Fred Hall Sr.’s house just up Franklin Street as he watched in awe.” says Dillingham. “I remember standing in the same spot watching him in awe throwing a baseball and football to us a half-century ago. Scary but comforting.” (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal aerial photo)

Previously all the piles were going into the deep hole that will become the science center’s basement. But the building footprint will actually extend beyond the basement to the east and west, and those extremities also need some extra support. So the second crane is driving piles to support those foundation components. The process is the same — the difference is the shallowness of the excavations at the ends. (They’re perfectly nice, just shallow.)

By Tuesday, July 29, piledriving at the east end was well underway, with more than a dozen at least partially sunk.

That’s not the only way the project team has sped up the piledriving, which had been challenged by the extra length of each pipe needed to provide sufficient foundation support — that is, the length needed to meet refusal, in the jargon of the trade, and sink no further.

We wrote previously about positioning each pipe in the basement hole, welding a second pipe onto it for the required length, and then having welds inspected. Tick tock! Now Consigli has taken that time-consuming process out of the hole, where room to work is shrinking as the foundation preparations are expanding.

The red screens protect other workers on the science center site from the intense, potentially injurious glare of welding torches. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Amidst the pipe piles in the cofferdammed portion of the science center foundation hole on July 25. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The concrete-pumping setup used to fill pipe piles, shown on its first day at �ֲ���ý, July 9. The Mack truck carries the pump and the extensible arm that puts the concrete where needed. Closer to Carnegie Science is the concrete mixer. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Pipe piles ready to be filled with concrete and capped with the steel plates at left. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Standing in the Bonney Science Center clay filling a pipe pile with concrete. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

“The Consigli team quickly learned that when the pile splicing was being done vertically in the hole there was a lot of other work that was being blocked and delayed,” explains Chris Streifel, �ֲ���ý’ project manager for Bonney Science. “It’s a big gain in efficiency to get the pre-splicing going effectively.”

A few weeks ago welders began fabricating 60-foot pipes up at ground level in the adjacent service area, at the south end of the site. And then, speaking of second fronts, a welding team from Warren Mechanical of Portland, Maine, set up an additional pipe-splicing operation at the college’s off-campus storage site, a few blocks away on Strawberry Avenue.

Now all of the horizontal splicing is taking place at Strawberry Avenue, where the crew can make up 10 or 12 piles daily. “You weigh the benefits of taking up a lot of real estate with the welding operation and impacting other work that you’re trying to do, vs. dealing with transportation” from Strawberry Avenue, Streifel says. “This is what made sense as they refined their process.

The way things stood at the Bonney Science Center site on July 30, 2019: In the foreground are freshly driven pipe piles at the easternmost end of the site. At the lower center are newly placed forms for concrete foundation footings. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

“So much of what’s been happening over the past couple of weeks is figuring out what works, where the points are that can be more efficient, and where more resources are needed to keep the overall workflow smooth.”

The welders developed a good productive rhythm, says Jacob Kendall, �ֲ���ý’ construction administrator (a position formerly called “clerk of the works”). “That production needs to sustain itself because they’re using both cranes.” With fewer than 100 piles left to drive, each crane will be able to do 10 or 12 daily once they’ve hit their stride, he says.

The second crane works faster than the first, thanks to a more forceful piledriving hammer. That larger hammer also changes the criteria for declaring refusal. If the pipe doesn’t move an inch after five blows from this hammer, that’s refusal. It’s 14 blows for the original crane.

There’s an important difference in rigging between the cranes, too. The first has what’s called a fixed-lead derrick: A framework connects the chassis of the crane to the base of the derrick, giving it a fixed angle of approach to the pile. The advantage is that by restricting the derrick motion, it concentrates the pile-driving force where it belongs instead of wasting energy in off-axis motion.

The second crane, in contrast, uses a “flying lead” — the pile-driving rig is not braced at the bottom. This gives the crane much more flexibility in positioning the hammer.

So from the pipe pile’s point of view, the new crane means that you can get conked on the head both harder and from farther away.

As Consigli Construction superintendent Stacey Harris (left) looks on, workers pump concrete into a pipe pile at the Bonney Science Center construction site on July 9. The concrete supply truck and pumper are out of view, above and to the right. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Meanwhile, the forms — think molds — for the concrete basement foundation wall started showing up this week. These are placed onto the stone-and-fabric load transfer platform — the “stone pillow” that we referred to in the previous installment — that’s being laid around the hole’s perimeter atop completed pipe piles.

Finally, another conspicuous development in the basement hole has been another hole: a rectangular area, cofferdammed by sheet piles, that is nine feet deeper than the rest of the basement. As the future site of holding tanks for storm runoff and other undesirable liquids, this feature has been expanding by leaps and bounds, as crews alternate excavation with piledriving.

Better-case scenario: Across the Historic Quad at the Gomes Chapel, a structural engineer determined in early July that most of the building’s portico is sound and will need only cosmetic restoration. The exceptions are its entrance facade and roof, both of which will be rebuilt.

This comes in contrast with the worst-case scenario anticipated by Consigli, which is overseeing the chapel’s ongoing restoration (as well as the science center project) for �ֲ���ý. Contingent on the findings of a “destructive investigation,” as �ֲ���ý project manager Shelby Burgau described it, Consigli had been prepared to raze the portico and rebuild it from the ground up.

So if the structure looks a little discouraged now, sans roof and quite a lot of masonry, just remember that it could have been much worse.

Sports Fields workers settle new turf into place on the �ֲ���ý soccer field on July 16, 2019. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Rolls of bluegrass turf set out on July 16 for re-covering the college soccer field, at the Russell Street sports complex. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The Sports Fields crew lays a roll of new grass on the �ֲ���ý soccer field on July 15. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

New grass on the �ֲ���ý soccer field on July 18. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Here's some restored masonry on the east wall of Gomes Chapel. The cast stone section at left is original, and the section at right is new. All the other stone has been repointed. It will look even better after a wash. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

In addition to project management, Consigli has brought its long expertise in masonry to bear on the chapel. Masonry foreman Keith Lyford estimated on July 30 that his crew had completed about 20 percent of its work on the west side, facing College Street, and 40 percent on the east.

The scope of the work includes repointing masonry joints, which is pretty far along; replacing deteriorated stone, notably much of the concrete ornamentation; and replacing the decorative cast traceries that surround most of the building’s windows.

Deteriorated masonry has been removed from this buttress on Gomes Chapel. The steel rods have been epoxied in place to secure the replacement stones. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The first round of precast pieces that make up the traceries is on site — about one window’s worth — and another delivery was expected on July 31. The traceries have to be put in place before Phoenix Studio of Naples, Maine, can reinstall the chapel’s signature stained glass, which it has been restoring this year.

Toppings, Part I: Over at the Russell Street Track and Field, irrigation of the new soccer field turf is underway and will continue for about another month.

The roots are digging in their toes and the seams between strips of Maine Turf Co. bluegrass are closing up, reports Jay Phillips, director of operations for Facility Services. “This week we’ll fertilize, and a week after that we’ll aerate, and then we’ll just keep activity off it until six weeks are up” since the turf was laid.

Lead contractor Sports Fields Inc. of Monmouth, Maine, planted some 300 rolls of the new grass in mid-July. Taking place July 15–18, the work was jaw-droppingly fast.

A worker in a specialized forklift placed the turf rolls on the field, driving backward to unwind them into place. He was attended by other workers who guided the alignment and then attacked each new strip of grass with rakes and knives to match up seams and slice out wrinkles.

After each roll, the forklift would spit out the PVC pipe on which the grass had been rolled up, and periodically other vehicles would go around picking up the pipes and the divots left over from fitting the turf.

“Sports Fields coordinated closely with Maine Turf to make sure the sod was very fresh when it arrived” from Fryeburg, Phillips notes. “That was a key to the success of the project, especially given the kind of heat that we had” the following weekend. “It’s so critical to get that sod down before it suffers too much stress.”

All told, the project budget was around $65,000.

New grass on the �ֲ���ý soccer field on July 18. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Toppings, Part II: Parking behind Lane Hall, �ֲ���ý’ administration building, suddenly became a matter of vital interest to us last November when the �ֲ���ý Communications Office was relocated from Nichols Street to Lane.

So we’ve been closely following the reconstruction of the Lane Hall parking lot, aka the Pit, which began the second week of July. As both the old pavement and the soil supporting it were deteriorating, the rebuilding has been a thorough job. With local excavation firm St. Laurent & Son as general contractor, the work to date has entailed excavation; placing new layers of geotextile fabric, aggregate base, and sub-base; and then laying a binder coat of asphalt.

Granite curbing is scheduled for placement this week, followed by resetting of drainage fixtures, the asphalt top coat, striping, and landscaping, including new trees on the center island. Depending on the outcome of a grant application, a dual-unit electric-car charger may also be sited there. The project should be complete by mid-August.

“It’s been a really nice project with our contractor partners,” says Phillips. He gives St. Laurent particular credit for keeping the project on track despite June weather that put participating subcontractors behind schedule.

The project will expand the lot’s capacity to 72 vehicles or so, contingent on the vicissitudes of striping. That’s a gain of about six vehicles. At long last, we’ll have a place to store our 1973 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes your questions and comments about current, past, future, and imaginary campus improvements. Please e-mail news writer Doug Hubley, stating “Construction Update” or “Did you ever try to change the spark plugs on a Karmann Ghia?” in the subject line.

Rolling the binder coat on the “Pit,” the Lane Hall parking lot, on July 17. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

A refusal they can’t offer

Welding a splice joining two sections of pipe pile. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Pipe up: Spliced pipe piles in the Bonney Science Center foundation hole on July 3, 2019. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Going to the chapel

The ongoing “destructive investigation” of the Gomes Chapel portico will reveal the feature’s fundamental structural health. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Consigli Construction masons at work on the Gomes Chapel exterior on June 17, 2019. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Demolition of a Merrill Gym squash court in June 2019. The area is being repurposed into a physical therapy area for �ֲ���ý’ sports medicine program. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

True Bluegrass

A laser-guided land leveler prepares the Russell Street soccer field for its new sod in mid-June. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

With a walker on the Russell Street track in the foreground, heaps of old sod on the �ֲ���ý soccer field await removal on June 12. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

“We’re excited to have this new, competitive, safe, and reliable surface for �ֲ���ý student-athletes to compete on.”

Framed by the arm of an excavator, pipe piles stand tall in the Bonney Science Center foundation hole on June 24, 2019. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

At the moment, a lot of the stained glass that distinguishes �ֲ���ý’ Peter J. Gomes Chapel is staying at a house in the hills of Naples, Maine, to the north of Sebago Lake.

The house is the home and workplace of Nat Croteau, a stained-glass craftsman and the owner of Phoenix Studio. Since late last year, Croteau has been restoring the windows from the east and west walls of the chapel — the sides facing the Historic Quad and College Street, respectively.

As we reported previously, the restoration is part of a larger chapel renovation that began with a round of work early in this decade. All told, that first phase and the current phase will amount to the building’s first major refresh since it opened, in 1914.

The phase underway now also entails a lot of repair or replacement of the exterior masonry, to be performed this summer by masons from Consigli Construction, which is also overseeing the chapel project for �ֲ���ý.

A partially dismantled stained-glass door insert at right, with materials for rebuilding it laid out at left. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Croteau is taking the windows apart, cleaning the glass and replacing damaged pieces, and rebuilding the window panels with completely new lead and glazing. The windows are scheduled to be reinstalled this summer. The stained glass on the north and south walls of the building will be redone next.

The east and west windows include eight groupings, each comprising five units, that depict persons key to the development of Western civilization (or figures regarded as such in the mid-1930s, when the glass was commissioned. Hence the absence of Elvis Presley.)

Seven of those groupings are at Phoenix. Still in place in Gomes is the eighth, depicting the poet Dante and the painter Fra Angelico, which Phoenix restored around 2012 in a pilot run for the current work.

With the mostly helpful help of the Google Maps robot, we made our way from �ֲ���ý to Naples on a weekday morning. The robot guided us through long sequences of potholes and frost heaves cleverly arranged to look like roads. Phoenix is on a hillside a few twisty miles in from the lakeshore downtown.

Stained-glass maker Nat Croteau of Phoenix Studio, at left, explains a point of technique to project managers Shelby Burgau of �ֲ���ý and Dylan Poulin of Consigli Construction. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Croteau welcomed Campus Construction Update and two others — Shelby Burgau, �ֲ���ý project manager, and Dylan Poulin, who’s managing the chapel work for Consigli — to his basement workshop.

On the floor next to a work table was a tangle of discarded metal strips — known in the profession as “came.” These are channeled lengthwise to hold the pieces of glass, such that a cross section of came looks like a capital H. (“Came” is a so-called mass or uncountable noun, meaning that Croteau works with “came” or “pieces of came,” but not with “cames.”)

The came that Croteau had stripped off was zinc, which he suggested was used in the original window fabrication because it was more cost-effective than lead — but, he noted, zinc doesn’t have the longevity of lead, which should hold up for between 70 and 100 years. “I’m surprised the zinc lasted as long as it did,” he said.

Resting on a plastic mesh, a Gomes Chapel ventilator window soaks in a cleaning solution at Phoenix Studio. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The bulk of the Gomes stained-glass restoration is replacing the came. Glass is brittle, but it’s stable across a span of centuries. Whether zinc or lead, came does eventually deteriorate with changes in temperature and moisture. So too does the glazing, which is the putty-like material that holds glass and lead together and seals the joint.

There were two panels of glass on the table. One had been reassembled with new came, the glass fitted into the channeled strips and the strips soldered together. The lead was surprisingly shiny. The other awaited new came, which was stockpiled in long boxes underneath the work surface.

Next to the table stood a stack of the large figurative windows, looking surprisingly small and dull in contrast to their radiance in the �ֲ���ý chapel. Next to those were steel frames some of the ventilator windows had been mounted in.

On a second table lay two glass inserts from four of the chapel doors. Making rubbings of the design on large sheets of paper as he went along, to create patterns for reassembly, Croteau was in the process of taking the door inserts apart. A thick stack of completed rubbings sat nearby.

Two more windows were on a third table at the other end of the workroom. Actually, these were in the table: It was a shallow bath and the panels were soaking in a cleaning solution preparatory to dismantling.

Nathaniel Croteau of Phoenix Studio. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

That bath does a couple other useful things, Croteau explained. It captures dust — dust containing lead, which one doesn’t want to breathe. He recovers the lead from the cleaning solution and recycles it. (Other precautions against lead consumption in the stained glass studio include wearing masks and respirators when needed, and not eating or drinking, or licking one’s fingers, while at work.)

The soak also loosens the glazing, making it easier to take apart the panel. “Glass tends to break when it’s removed, so you don’t want something too tenacious holding it in there,” Croteau said.

Even new glazing needs to have a little give to it. When you’re putting an assembled panel back in its frame, you want the glazing to flex so that he glass doesn’t have to — glass not being very flexible. (Croteau’s own glazing is a mixture of linseed oil and powdered limestone, colored with carbon black.)

Most of Croteau’s progress to date has been on the chapel’s 32 smaller “operable” windows, meaning openable. When we visited, he had six more such windows to finish.

Why couldn’t he start the restoration with the big signature pictorial windows? At the chapel, they’re mounted into ornamental frames called tracery, and all the tracery is going to be replaced with exact replicas. The glass panels fit into gaps, so-called rabbits, in the tracery — and Croteau couldn’t rebuild those windows without knowing what thickness of came would fit the tracery.

In the foreground of this image taken at Phoenix Studio is a freshly restored ventilator window from the Gomes Chapel. The panel behind it is next up for rebuilding. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

When we visited, he had just received shop drawings that provided those dimensions. The drawings were provided by Northern Design Precast of Loudon, N.H., which will be casting the concrete tracery from three-dimensional scans taken by a Maine firm, Sebago Technics of South Portland.

Consigli has worked with Phoenix, Sebago Technics, and Northern Design on other projects. Shelby Burgau’s project management experience prior to �ֲ���ý, she told us after the visit, had not covered the glass and tracery techniques that the Gomes Chapel project entails — “which is why it’s awesome to be partnered with people who are the best in the state at doing this.”

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The window openings in the Gomes Chapel have been filled temporarily with polycarbonate panels while the stained glass is being restored. The substitute material is so clear that you can see College Street — note the streetlamp — through the building from the Historic Quad. The tunnel-like shape at right is a reflection. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Until this week, Campus Construction Update had paid relatively little thought to the relatively large list of slang terms, many of them derogatory, that have “Dutch” in them.

That changed when we learned that the Peter J. Gomes Chapel has begun a new round of major restoration work and that Dutchmen will play an important role in it.

The top row of roundels in this soaring stained-glass installation behind the chapel pulpit depicts, from left, the biblical Matthew, Mark, Christ as the Lamb of God, Luke, and John. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Cast stone window tracery in the portico of the Peter J. Gomes Chapel, photographed last June. All such tracery in the chapel will be scanned and replaced with exact duplicates. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The Phoenix Studio team prepares to remove a set of stained glass windows in the Gomes Chapel on Nov. 30, 2018. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

There's no other way to say it: A Phoenix Studio employee traces around a section of window tracery as his team prepares to remove stained glass windows in the Gomes Chapel on Nov. 30, 2018. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Crumbling cast stone trim around a window on the east side of the Gomes Chapel. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Naturally, we don’t actually mean human males of Dutch descent. Instead, in fields from carpentry to railroading to theatrical set-making — and in the case of the chapel, masonry — a “dutchman” is a repair made by cutting out a section of damaged material and replacing it with a matching section of new material.

All of which is to say that �ֲ���ý has resumed work on a project, begun in 2011, to refurbish the 105-year-old chapel. During the 15 months of Phase One, the building’s entire slate roof was replaced, the copper cupolas on the corner towers repaired, and the masonry sheathing on the towers fully restored.

Then and now, water damage is driving the project. Penetrating moisture was degrading mortar joints, eroding masonry, freezing into giant icicles inside the towers, and damaging spaces used for chapel activities, notably the choir loft. (We witnessed the extraction of a time capsule from a tower wall during Phase One: It was full of water, and the original contents were “a slimy pile of goop,” says Pat Webber, director of the Muskie Archives.)

Crumbling cast stone trim around a window on the east side of the Gomes Chapel. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Begun this month, the second phase of the chapel restoration encompasses all the exterior masonry that wasn’t treated previously, plus the portico that protects the chapel’s entrance, all the building’s stained glass, and the concrete tracery embellishing the windows.

Exterior masonry repair commences just after Commencement 2019 and should be complete by November. In progress now, the Gomes stained glass and associated window tracery will take longer and be done in two batches. The windows in the chapel’s east and west walls (facing the Historic Quad and College Street, respectively) are being removed and should be reinstalled by this time next year. And the north and south windows will come out next fall and come home in September 2020.

Clear polycarbonate panes, resembling Plexiglas, will fill the window openings in the interim.

The Phoenix Studio team prepares to remove a set of stained glass windows in the Gomes Chapel on Nov. 30, 2018. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

“The longer we wait to do the work, the worse the situation will get,” says Shelby Burgau, the Facility Services project manager directing the restoration. “The need is pretty obvious — it’s not preventative maintenance at this point, it’s work needed to keep the building intact and to prevent future damage.”

Further delay, she says, could elevate repair costs to a whole new order of magnitude. In particular, the college is concerned that water penetration at the rear of the chancel could damage the hand-painted reredos. “If we don’t address these issues now,” Burgau says, “the scope of work could just blow up.”

Consigli Construction, a familiar name to CCU readers, oversaw Phase One for �ֲ���ý and has returned to see the project through.

There’s no other way to say it: A Phoenix Studio employee traces around a section of window tracery as his team prepares to remove stained glass windows in the Gomes Chapel on Nov. 30, 2018. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The chapel will be out of service, for the most part, until 2021. Facility Services, the Events office, and the Multifaith Chaplaincy are harmonizing chapel bookings with the construction schedule.

Anyhoo, having sorted out “dutchman,” we next tackled “tracery.” This is cast concrete, also euphemistically known as cast stone, that makes a decorative pattern around a window or other opening. In the Gomes chapel, there’s tracery in the portico and around each stained-glass window.

During stained-glass installation, the panels are fitted into the so-called rabbet — a crevice in the tracery — and are secured with mortar and caulk. To remove the glass, therefore, all that gunk needs to be gouged out, a time-consuming chore.

The existing tracery will all be replaced. The original sections will be laser-scanned to produce virtual three-dimensional models, and these will serve as templates for the replacements.

The stained-glass depictions of Italian painter Fra Angelico, left, and the poet Dante Alighieri were restored in a Phoenix Studio pilot project a few years ago and will remain in place throughout the Gomes Chapel restoration. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

A firm highly esteemed in Maine stained-glass circles, Phoenix Studio of Naples is restoring the windows. The Gomes stained glass includes depictions of 20 key figures in Western culture in the east and west walls of the nave; and, in the chancel, glass portraying Christ as the Lamb of God, flanked by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Phoenix submitted the winning bid on the �ֲ���ý job about a decade ago. Circa 2012, Phoenix restored one five-window grouping on the west wall as a pilot project. That set, depicting the painter Fra Angelico and the poet Dante, will remain in place through the current work.

The restoration will entail the complete dismantling and documentation of the windows, cleaning of the glass and replacement of damaged pieces, and reassembling the whole works with new lead. (But no dutchmen: In stained glass repair, a dutchman is a lead strip used to hide a crack in the glass. Such repairs actually weaken the window and are no longer an acceptable practice.)

Cast stone window tracery in the portico of the Peter J. Gomes Chapel, photographed last June. All such tracery in the chapel will be scanned and replaced with exact duplicates. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

As for the portico, which Burgau says is “severely deteriorating,” �ֲ���ý and Consigli have plans A and B. Plan A, she explains, “is to restore all the stonework, the tracery, the steps leading up, and the concrete slab it sits on. So, there’s already a decent amount of work associated with it.”

Hopefully there will be no call for Plan B: razing the portico and rebuilding it completely. “We are accounting for that, budget- and schedule-wise, and we’re hoping for the best. But it’s going to be one of the first pieces that Consigli tackles next year in case a full teardown is needed.”

BCO HQ: After our chapel visit, we headed back to the �ֲ���ý Communications Office with the stained-glass Dante lingering in our mind’s eye. But midway through our journey, we found ourselves in a dark chamber, for we had lost the straightforward path.

Then we realized we had stumbled into a mechanical room in the basement of Lane Hall, and a quick retreat through a couple of doors returned us to the spotless corridors of BCO’s new home.

From left, editorial director Jay Burns, design director Grace Kendall, and strategic communications director Madge Hall meet in the �ֲ���ý Communications Office nerve center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The Communications team occupied its subterranean digs during the week before Thanksgiving. As previously reported, the offices were created from space most recently occupied by Residence Life, previously Post & Print, and, another generation ago, the Secretarial Pool. (Workers for project contractor Hebert Construction found some of their old bathing caps during the project.)

Designed by Canal 5 Studio, an architecture firm in the Portland, Maine, the conversion was a wholesale imagining of a space that extends underneath Alumni Walk and is laterally connected to Pettengill Hall by a tunnel, rumored to be a former fallout shelter.

“The outcome of the project is a really sophisticated area. I like it,” says Burgau, who oversaw the BCO construction prior to taking on the chapel. “We completed on schedule, on budget, and we got you guys moved in the day we were planning to.”

The move reunites BCO’s 17 members in a single building for the first time since 2002. (Three members, though, occupy executive offices one flight up from the rest of the team.) It’s a warren of workspaces made dazzling with white walls, bold accent colors (�ֲ���ý garnet on the wall outside the CCU office), and brilliant LED lighting. The nerve center is a collaboration area lined with glass-walled offices, from which members of the team can view each other and wave in a friendly manner.

Surrounded by offices, the counter encourages collaboration among �ֲ���ý Communications Office staff. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

In terms of energy conservation, the BCO space is as good as it gets at �ֲ���ý, says energy manager John Rasmussen. Along with the Campus Avenue dorms completed in 2016 and a few other facilities, “BCO is right where we want to bring all the rest of our facilities.”

The project encompassed the creation of a space-specific HVAC network whose variable refrigerant flow controllers save energy by closely matching the heating or cooling effort to the actual need.

More noticeable to the �ֲ���ý communicators, though, is the lighting, which uses occupancy sensors — “occ sensors” to industry insiders like Campus Construction Update — to dim or extinguish lights when no one is around to benefit from them. The occ sensors also turn lights on when people enter a space, thus sparing precious muscle effort for banging keyboards.

Various technologies serve to detect occupancy, and the BCO system combines two: infrared detectors that respond to body heat, and sensors that respond to disruptions in an ultrasonic field.

Rasmussen reckons that occupancy-sensing lights, on average, use about two-thirds the electricity of traditional systems. Then you can factor in the savings realized through LED lights — which, Rasmussen estimates, draw about a third as much power as equivalent incandescents (remember those?) and about half as much as compact fluorescents.

Can we talk? Please use the digital communications apparatus below or send your questions, comments and favorite quotes from Dante, either Alighieri or Silvio, to Doug Hubley. If emailing, please put “Construction Update” or “I want my bathing cap back” in the subject line.

A garnet accent wall in a reception area in the new �ֲ���ý Communications Office, Lane Hall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)