The historic lantern tower that sat above the Second Church in Dorchester for more than 200 years before being taken down for repairs in 2023 is back where it belongs – high above Codman Square.

Last Wednesday morning (Jan. 29), steeplejacks from American Steeple and Tower of Salem, Mass., lifted the rebuilt 6,000-pound tower portion back in place. The dome section will be weatherized and sealed and then placed atop the tower later this winter, with new copper sheathing being installed after it’s in place. Before removal, the steeple hadn’t been disturbed since 1806.

Even more exciting is the news that funding is being secured to restore the clock tower into working order by repairing the eaves and getting the circa 1811 Paul Revere & Sons bell ringing regularly for all the neighborhood to hear.

“That was an exciting and tremendous moment,” said Second Church’s Rev. Victor Price of the tower reinstallation. “It was a piece of the puzzle going in place and that’s movement forward…For me, it’s bringing back historic life and a taste of antiquity in modern times. I’m very excited.”

Steeplejack Bob Levesque and preservation consultant Jeff Gonyeau of Dorchester (above) were on hand to supervise the project, which was delayed by about 18 months after crews found rotting wood that threatened the ancient structure’s integrity.

“It’s great to see this and it’s a long time coming,” said Gonyeau. “We would have rather not found catastrophic rot in the tower that added one-and-a-half years to the project, but today we’re glad we did, and we fixed it and that will allow it last another 200 years because we have the right people and processes in place.”

Levesque and his crews had to rebuild an eight-sided “spider” frame, one of several structural pieces that had failed, to support the lantern tower. Six of the tower’s eight columns also had to be rebuilt, with only two original ones being saved.

Once the steeple is fully restored pursuant to the $790,000 Community Preservation Act (CPA) grant given to the project, the cell phone monopole in the church yard will be removed and new cell tower equipment will be replaced and camouflaged in the lantern tower. Gonyeau noted that about 90 percent of the outdated cell equipment was removed as part of the rebuilding effort.

As to the additional work to be done at the site, a second CPA grant for $298,000 has made it through several early phases. The city of Boston’s CPA Committee will vote on the additional funding on Feb. 10, and then it will need approval by Mayor Wu and the City Council. They rarely oppose projects from the CPA panel.

“We’ve got our fingers crossed it will make it through the three remaining hurdles,” said Gonyeau.

If it does, that grant will focus on the clock tower below the steeple by removing the aluminum siding and doing some heavy carpentry to restore that part of the rehabilitation effort. They will also focus on the eaves of the south side of the church that are damaged.

Private grants from the George B. Henderson Fund and the new Legacy Fund for Boston are in place to get the clock working, restore its faces, and put the bell in ringing order for the first time in generations.

The Legacy Fund provided $64,000 to restore the clock and bell ringing mechanisms as well as the glass clock face on the west side of the tower. The Henderson Fund’s $55,000 gift will restore the three wooden clock faces on the tower.

“The bell is invisible to the public right now,” said Rev. Price. “When the time comes for it to ring again, that sound will become a reminder in the minds of the older ones that know and the younger ones who are curious – that we have that history here in an 1811 Paul Revere & Sons bell right in Dorchester. It will be a fascinating experience to hear it.”

He said they haven’t begun to discuss the frequency of the bell, whether it would be at certain times of the day or every hour, but he assured it would be a marvelous sound from a real bell, not “the chimes” you might hear elsewhere.

Gonyeau noted that the clock was donated by Walter Baker, of the Walter Baker Chocolate Factory, in the 1850s. Around 1914, a women’s Christian education class donated the funds to convert one of the faces to glass and to illuminate it. Once completed, all four clocks will work, the west face will have restored glass and be backlit again, and the bell will ring. The clock will have to be hand-wound daily, he noted.

The bell’s cradle and wheel structure that hold it in place were also rotten beyond fixing, but in what Gonyeau called a “total and nice coincidence,” the Park Street Church below Beacon Hill had replaced their cradle and wheel with a newer model and their old one was still in fine condition. Bob Levesque the steeplejack moved it to the Second Church to support its bell.

Rev. Price noted that even as the church restoration is ongoing and Codman Park is under construction nearby, and the Great Hall across the street is undergoing renewal work, there remain serious problems in the immediate neighborhood with loitering, bad behavior and public drinking.

“It’s a challenge for us,” he said. “We have to consider how to teach the younger generation how to be more cordial and courteous in the Square. It might be too late for the older ones, but we can train the youth. We can make the Square beautiful enough that people will live up to the expectations of how nice it looks.”

As to the pastor’s reference to work at The Great Hall, Gonyeau said that new funding has also been secured to continue restoration efforts at The Great Hall for which he is also the preservation consultant for that project.

There has been a lot of work already done on the roof and gables of the building’s exterior, but now they are restoring the unique “diamond windows” around the building and the metal flashing that surrounds it as well. Once the envelope is completely repaired, efforts to fix and restore the interior space will be discussed.

Seth Daniel photos