Bowdoinham's Landmark

10/30/96 A crane puts down the blue onion dome of the Bowdoinham Town Hall Tuesday. A new dome modeled after this one, which was found to be beyond repair, is due to go up next spring.
(Terry Taylor /Times Record)

BOWDOINHAM -- From her studio where she illustrates children's books, Sarah Stapler has surveyed the blue onion dome atop Bowdoinham's town hall for years. But at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Stapler donned gloves and a down vest, picked up a camera and stood in the wind as a crane lowered the century-old wooden steeple to the ground.

She'll miss the familiar sight peeking at her through her window or positioned above the trees as she drives up Route 24. "It's right in our back yard," she said. "It's in our lives. It's traumatic." The steeple has been above the town hall for about 100 years. It is falling apart. At the spring town meeting voters allocated about $50,000 to replace it. A steeplewright from Greene, R.O. Hanscom was hired to build another. On Tuesday, workers set the steeple on the ground beside the 172 year-old building and placed a cap over the opening it left. The new structure is scheduled to go up next spring. It will be modeled after the old one, but it won't be the same, Stapler said.

Decades of initials are carved in the walls. Beside one set, the year 1905 is etched in the wood. The Rev Daniel Joyce, who grew up next door and now preaches at the Nazarene church down the lane, said romantic young couples have gone there since he was a kid. From the top of the town hall - the highest spot in town they could see Bath's Carlton Bridge and all of Merrymeeting Bay . "It's where you'd take your best girl and kiss her," he said.

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1/14/97 IN PHOTO ABOVE, Robert Hanscom stands in front of Bowdoinham town hall's two steeples. Directly behind him, the old,one sat atop the former church for more than 150 years. The new one is in the background. In photo at right, Hanscom rests inside the town hall. (Terry Taylor /Times Record)

BOWDOINHAM&emdash;Robert Hanscom said he may be the only "steeplewright" in existence.

Hanscom made up the name when no others seemed to fit, he said. Some builders restore steeples. Steeplejacks paint church tops. "I build them," he said. "There was no word for what I do."

For three months, the 46 year-old craftsman has been rattling around the unheated and uninhabited town hall here, listening to country music and rebuilding the Byzantine dome that once sat atop the 150-year-old former church at the center of town. Hanscom began work in Bowdoinham in October measuring the rotting dome and creating a set of plans for another. The new one, almost complete, will last longer than the old one, he said. Every joint is bolted. The wood is pressure-treated and, the green dome wears a layer of copper. Its predessor was painted with copper paint.

The steeple reconstruction is the biggest part of a $40,000 fix-up of the old town hall. Dawn Stevenson, the acting chair woman of the town hall restoration committee, said the town could have simply bought a cap for the tower or an inexpensive but prefabricated and generic steeple. Estimates for that job were between $15,000 and $30,000. This steeple job, costing a couple thousand dollars shy of the $40,000, will maintain one of the town's landmarks, she said.

"It's what people think of when they think of Bowdoinham," she said. Money for the job was approved by voters two years ago. After planning to use another builder who delayed the project for a year, Hanscom was suggested for the job by the minister of Bowdoinham's Nazarene Church, whose steeple was repaired by Hanscom.

He became a carpenter after he graduated from high school working for a contractor for just a year before setting out on his own. With the exception of a year as a Bath Iron Works shipfitter in 1981, he has worked for himself ever since. He said being layed off from the shipyard was the best thing that ever happened to him.

"I have worked for other people just two times," he said. He proudly displays his name and job description in handmade signs on his truck and on the side of the town hall and on the ball cap on his head.

Hanscom started fixing steeples in 1984, when his own Turner church began looking for someone to make repairs. He told church leaders he could do the job for less money than the contractor they were about to pay.

Since then he has repaired steeples throughout Maine. Usually booked six months in advance, he tries to schedule jobs so that repairs take him to the seaside on the summer. This year, he will spend several weeks fixing a steeple in Camden and living in the harbor on his 25 foot sailboat.

The best church tops - like this one in Bowdoinham - over look coastal towns, he said. Those churches were financed by sea captains and erected by ship builders, he said.

Hanscom scowls at new steeples, coated with aluminum and made in a factory. He said they are strong and need littIe maintenance but have no personality. "The new ones are not going to keep a guy like me in business."

His factory is a wood shop in Greene, where he lives. A piece of every steeple he has done is there, many hanging from the ceiling.

He has the weathervane ball that sat atop the Waterville Baptist Church and the one in Winthrop, the cloverleaf from another in Ellsworth.

Most carry the scars of years of weather and abuse. Steeples, he said, "shiver and quake in the wind. They have to be tough."

Steeplewright Robert Hanscom of Greeneworks on top of a new dome for the Bowdoinham Town Hall, Monday morning. According to Hanscom, if the weather cooperates, he hopes to have the new steeple in place sometime in January. The roughtly 100 year old steeple at left was taken down in October because it was falling apart. (Paul Cunningham Photo/Times Record)

2/25/97 Steeplewright Robert Hanscom hangs high above Bowdoinham Town Hall, preparing to place a weathervane on the new steeple of that building. A crane from Cote Crane and Rigging of Auburn lifted the 8,400 pound steeple earlier that morning. (Paul Cunningham Photo/Times Record)