News

Dover City Hall clock tower getting facelift for 400th

By Mary Pat Rowland
Portsmouth Herald
DOVER, N.H. — The City Hall clock tower, which city officials say has lost its sheen and is sorely in need of a significant cosmetic overhaul, will be getting a full facelift ahead of the city’s 400th birthday celebration in 2023.

City Manager Mike Joyal said recently the 80-foot clock tower needs a lot of work to get it in show-worthy condition for the city’s big birthday bash, the bulk of which will be celebrated during a 10-day schedule ahead of July 4, 2023. Joyal said no major attention has been paid to the clock tower during the last 25 years and the time has come to spruce it up.

“The gold leaf looks terrible,” Joyal said.

In addition to the fading gold leaf finish on the tower roof, the outside of the structure needs a fresh coat of paint and some of the louvers in the long arched openings on the tower appear to be open and uneven giving it an unkempt appearance. Those broken louvers will be addressed as part of the project, according to Sharon Sirois, Dover’s superintendent of facilities, grounds and cemeteries.

The brass clock mechanisms, manufactured by E. Howard & Company of Boston and installed in 1934, are all automated now, according to Sirois. She said there are cosmetic issues with the four clock faces, which are wood underneath with tin on top. The main face of the clock doesn’t match with the rest of the clock from the outside because of yellowing and an opaque appearance from aging plexiglass, she said. It would be good to get the clock faces brightened up and consistent in color, Sirois said.

Joyal agrees. That’s why he included $500,000 in the city’s Capital Improvements Plan (CIP) to dress up the structure. The City Council approved the CIP Dec. 12, with the tower repairs included, Joyal said. That action puts the project in a queue earmarked for funding and action during the summer of 2022, a year ahead of the 400th birthday celebration.

The tower money is part of a list of City Hall improvements that also includes a sprinkler system and some additions to the electrical system, Joyal said.

The $500,000 is an estimate of costs, Joyal said, noting that the New Hampshire State House dome, which was recently refurbished, cost almost $1 million. Dover’s clock tower is much smaller, however, and doesn’t have nearly that amount of gold leaf to replace.

The next step in the process, according to Joyal, is for the City Council to vote again next winter to actually appropriate the funds outlined in the CIP. If the council approves, the city will hire a consulting engineer to do a thorough examination of the clock tower and come up with a scope of work to be done. That work would be slated for the summer of 2022, Joyal said.

Part of the engineer’s examination would include taking a look at the city’s historic bell at the top of the clock tower, Joyal said.

Sirois and Dover Community Services Director John Storer took Foster’s Daily Democrat on a tour of the tower in late November. They led the way to the clock tower via a door and several arduous flights of stairs hidden behind a door in the finance department on the second floor of City Hall.

Sirois and Storer pointed out a problem with the bell during the tour, noting that the long rope used to ring it was missing from its usual spot on the landing below the clock tower. The rope used to hang from the bell to the floor below so the bell could easily be rung. Now, the only way to ring the bell would be to climb the rungs of a vertical ladder to the very top of the tower.

Neither Storer, Sirois, nor Joyal knew what happened to the rope over the years, but Joyal said it would be fixed so the bell could be safely rung on the city’s 400th birthday and he would be sure to include rope repair once a consulting engineer is hired to look at the structures inside the tower. The bell’s striker is still intact, Joyal said, so it should not take much to get the bell in working order.

The bell was rung on July 4, 1976, to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial, according to city records. After that, Joyal said, as far as he has been able to determine, the last time the bell was rung was on Sept. 11, 2001, after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Joyal said church bells rang throughout Dover after that horrific day and he recalled the City Hall bell being rung by local firefighters to commemorate the victims who died in those attacks.

The significance of the bell to Dover’s history makes it a must for ringing on the city’s 400th birthday, according to Mayor-elect Robert Carrier. “It will be fantastic to hear that bell on the city’s birthday,” Carrier said.

“We’re all in. It is fitting to have City Hall all cleaned up before the 400th,” he added. “It will look like a million bucks.”

Though City Hall is 84 years old, the bell is older and more historic. The bell is the same one that rang in Dover’s third City Hall or Opera House as it was called, according to city historical records. That city hall, built in 1891 in the same location as today’s city hall, burned down on Aug. 3, 1933.

Dover’s first two city halls also burned down. Both of those buildings were located at the corner of Washington Street and Central Avenue, where the Masonic building is now located.

City officials had the rescued bell, which was badly damaged in the 1933 fire, recast and installed it in the new city hall, which was dedicated in December 1935, according to city records.

After three devastating city hall fires, the city went all out to create a better structure, according to city historical records. The current City Hall is a Georgian colonial-style, cost $300,000 and was constructed with more than 1 million bricks, 190 tons of steel and 16 fireproof vaults. The bell is one of the oldest relics in the building. According to documents provided by Sirois, the bell was manufactured in the world-renowned Meneely Bell Foundry of Watervliet, N.Y.

Storer said the bell could add a great deal to Dover’s 400th celebration, suggesting that it could even be used as part of the fundraising efforts underway to help pay for the celebration. Storer said that perhaps raffle tickets could be sold to those interested in being the Dover citizen chosen to ring the clock tower bell on Dover’s birthday.

Kevin McEneaney, chairman of Dover’s 400th Anniversary Committee, an ad hoc committee of the City Council with 16 members, called Storer’s idea “fabulous.” The committee, which has been charged with planning the celebration, met recently and heard about Storer’s idea from McEneaney. “The committee is very excited about the possibility of weaving the bell ringing into the celebration somehow,” McEneaney said.

“We’re kind of getting our feet underneath us,” McEneaney said. The group plans to debut a new website in the spring, which will include a relaunch of the 400th logo.

So far, the committee is working on themes of past, present and future associated with the celebration. Events keyed on the city’s past could include Dover’s first people, Native Americans, McEneaney said. Schools, including Dover’s graduating Class of 2023, may be part of the theme covering present day, he added.

There will be a series of events starting next year associated with Dover’s 400th. Some of those might have some fundraising attached to them, but others will be more geared toward community outreach and seeking volunteers for the massive planning and execution needed to pull off such a large-scale event, McEneaney said.

The first of those events will be a public forum upstairs in the Dover Public Library at 10 a.m., Saturday, Feb. 8. McEneaney said they are looking for residents to attend and talk about how they want to see the city celebrate. He’s also hoping for volunteers to come forward and sign up. “We need a lot of help,” McEneaney said.

The main celebration in 2023 will likely be scheduled for a 10-day period extending from Saturday, June 24 through Tuesday, July 4 and will include a parade and fireworks, McEneaney said, but much more planning remains.

The committee is also pushing “400 for 400,” an initiative originated by Dover City Councilor Dennis Ciotti, which seeks 400 donations of $400 to support activities for Dover’s 400th birthday bash.

The city is also contributing to the 400th celebration. In addition to the planned clock tower spruce-up, Joyal said the city had already contributed $5,000 to get the ad hoc planning committee going and another $50,000 to help the committee with other initial expenses, including merchandising and booking and reserving entertainment.

The city’s usual $10,000 allocation for fireworks will go toward the 400th fireworks display in 2023, Joyal said.

In addition, Joyal said, the city will not schedule any disruptive projects in the downtown area for 2023. “We’ll coordinate projects around the 2023 celebration,” Joyal said, “at least anything we have control over.”

Water main and sewer line replacements downtown will be put off past 2023, he said.

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