November-December 2000 > John Harvard's Journal

An Autumn Accent: Gold Leaf

Nobody quite remembers when the portico ceilings outside  Memorial Church were last tended. They’re easy to miss, if you’re  not in the habit of looking up. Refreshed with new paint and gold  leaf this fall, they are now particularly worthy of attention.  “The Reverend [Gomes] is very happy,” says property manager Daniel  Murphy, who oversees work at the church, where the last two summers  have seen the exterior entirely repainted. Architectural decorative  artists restored the portico ceiling while the finishing touches—gold  leaf for the massive weathervane atop the church—were being added  by Robert Levesque Jr., a second-generation steeplejack. Levesque  last gilded the weathervane in 1988, like his father before him  in 1975. Levesque uses oversize chimney jacks made especially  for this steeple to secure the scaffolding. His father used standard,  smaller jacks that had to be stabilized with come-alongs, an assembly  that the son remembers as precarious. Even so, when Levesque lassoes  the massive weathervane—which is five feet high and eight feet  wide and requires eight rolls of Italian gold leaf ($350 a roll)  to gild—it can catch a breeze and set the steeple and scaffold  silently rocking together—265 feet above the ground. 

Back on earth, in the realm of the freshman residence halls,  new students arrived with their belongings. The unfortunate occupants  of a fourth-floor Stoughton Hall room, having settled in, were  discommoded when their ceiling collapsed in a hail of plaster  and dust. Stoughton and neighboring Hollis Hall were evacuated,  and Loker Commons was fitted with cots to house the displaced  first-years. No one was seriously hurt in the incident and—after  fevered work by engineers, who identified faulty nails as the  culprit—the ceiling was repaired and the freshmen reinstalled,  all in just two days.