places
‘I always knew it was going
to be wonderful. But I didn’t
know it was going to be
breathtakingly beautiful.’
— BEVERLY MORGAN-WELCH
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free black community of Beacon Hill until
1898, when it was sold it to a Jewish congregation, who used it as a synagogue.
The restoration began in 2005, but was
halted when the initial $2.5 million in private funding was used up. At that point, the
Meeting House was closed to the public. In
2010, good fortune came in the form of federal stimulus funds, part of the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The total
cost for the project, estimated at $9.5 million, will be covered by a combintion of
stimulus grant money and resources from
fundraising.
The restored Meeting House feels
warm and welcoming — the cherry pews
are painted a mellow ochre (Benjamin
Moore Bryant Gold, to be exact) and the
walls are a soothing tawny tone (Benjamin
Moore Summer Harvest), colors that were
thoroughly researched for historical accuracy. Waite, who had a distant relative on
the original building committee, considered
and reconsidered every aspect of restoration,
from the historic glass used in the windows to
the natural pine floors to the shape, design,
and configuration of the pews, which have
been built slightly larger to accommodate
the 21st-century American physique. Even
the bricks were specially made to replicate
the originals.
“You take that extra step,” says Carl Jay,
director of historic preservation for Shawmut
Design and Construction. “We used specialty
companies for all the millwork and specialty
companies for the plaster. We found out how
to shape and mold the pews in a way that
would respect the original design but that
would last.”
According to Clay Palazzo, project man-
ager at John G. Waite Associates, there was
