More than four years after the steeple and bell came down from atop Tisbury Town Hall, the 1844 building — a former church — finally has them back again.
To be precise: The original bell is back in place, though silenced for the time being. The Travis Tuck weathervane at the steeple’s apex has also returned, its copper curlicues gleaming from refurbishment.
But the belfry and steeple are brand new. Identical replicas made from aluminum, they arrived Friday from Kentucky and went up over the weekend in a painstaking operation that closed Spring street for the better part of two days.
“All they do is steeples,” Tisbury public works director Kirk Metell said of Campbellsville Industries of Campbellsville, Ky., which delivered the new parts Friday on three flatbed trailers — one for the louvered belfry, one for the steeple and one for the trim, which arrived in sections that were bolted on just before installation.
Mike Josefek of Architectural Consulting Group in New Bedford, who has been working with Tisbury as owner’s project manager for the steeple job, said Campbellsville also was the only company in the eastern United States that could fulfill the town’s order for a replacement steeple assembly able to withstand Island winds.
After more than a century and a half atop the all-wooden building, the original steeple had shifted on its supports by the early 2000s, developing a decided tilt of more than six inches that put it at risk of toppling, Mr. Metell told the town’s community preservation committee in an application for funding in 2017.
A structural engineer who surveyed the building found the roof itself leaking and rotting after years of deferred and piecemeal maintenance, adding to the steeple’s instability.
After the 2018 annual town meeting approved funding for the work, the original steeple was lifted off town hall early that December and moved to the public works department barn near High Point Lane.
There, it was measured and photographed in meticulous detail for the Campbellsville engineers, Mr. Metell told the Gazette Saturday morning, as a 110-foot-long crane boom once again towered above Spring street.
Including belfry and trim, the aluminum steeple weighs a third of the wooden original and comes with a 50-year warranty, Mr. Metell said.
Mr. Josefek said the original steeple assembly weighed in at more than 10,000 pounds when it came down in 2018.
The William Street Historic District Commission, which doubles as the historic commission for all of Tisbury, originally gave the town two years to replace the steeple, but the project was delayed by a number of factors, including Covid-19 and aluminum shortages, Mr. Metell said.
On Saturday, Spring street neighbors snapped photos and watched from behind caution tape as crews from the town, Island Home Builders and Baxter Crane Rigging of Yarmouth worked on the reinstallation with the Campbellsville team.
The 1844 bell went up first, stoutly mounted in a solid wooden cradle but otherwise untouched.
“We tried to leave the patina,” Mr. Metell said. “We didn’t want to cause any stress or damage.”
Apparently cast by the son and namesake of early American bellmaker George Holbrook, who died in 1820, the bell has the initials GH daubed on its outside. It’s also inscribed 1844 HOLBROOK EAST, likely a reference to the family’s foundry in East Medway (now part of Millis).
“That bell is a piece of art,” said the Rev. Leo Christian of First Baptist Church, who lives in the parsonage directly next door to town hall and also serves on the historic commission.
In earlier years, Reverend Christian said as he watched the work from his front yard, First Baptist and town hall both rang their bells in a Tisbury tradition several times a year.
But for now, the Holbrook bell — which weighs several thousand pounds on its own — remains silent. To reduce strain on the rickety building, it will no longer swing back and forth with a clapper striking its tuned metal sides.
Mr. Metell said he’s looking into a mechanical striker for the bell instead.
That can’t happen soon enough for neighbor Susan Branch.
“We need the bells,” Ms. Branch said. “This is New England. People come here for that.”
Originally a single-story church, the Spring street building was lifted sometime during its first few decades, with a ground floor added beneath what is now the Katharine Cornell Theatre upstairs.
The town purchased the building in 1920 from retired whaling captain and former Tisbury selectman Gilbert L. Smith, and renamed it after seasonal town resident and stage star Katharine Cornell in 1971, when a grant funded the renovation of the second floor as a performance space. The town uses the first floor for administrative offices — although the cramped quarters have forced some departments into the theater space since the pandemic.
Before their removal in 2018, the bell and steeple had remained steady presences at the building's helm throughout its nearly two centuries of transition.
On Sunday, the belfry and its pointed top were re-installed, with Mr. Tuck’s weathervane the finishing touch.
The whole job cost around $200,000, Mr. Metell said, of which about $128,000 was for the replacement and delivery.
The old wooden steeple remains in storage until town officials find another place for it, perhaps at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, Mr. Metell said.
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