Saving history, piece by piece

A crew begins an impressive part of the 10-year project.

By KELLEY BOUCHARD, Staff Writer October 8, 2008

enlarge Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

James Taylor of Preservation Timber Framing waits to guide a rafter from the Abyssinian Meeting House onto a trailer Tuesday. Pieces will be moved to a nearby lot, where they will be used as patterns for duplicating the building’s roof. The building on Newbury Street was built in 1828.

enlarge Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

A crew prepares to remove a primary rafter from its king post. A temporary roof will cover the Abyssinian Meeting House.

enlarge Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

Crew members, from left, Tom Glynn, Arron Sturgiss, Pete Dellea and Scott Lewis prepare to lIft a rafter from the roof of the Abyssinian Meeting House in Portland during restoration work Tuesday.

HISTORY OF THE ABYSSINIAN

SIX BLACK MEN published a letter in the Eastern Argus newspaper in 1826 calling for construction of an African-American church in Portland.

THE ABYSSINIAN RELIGIOUS SOCIETY built the meeting house in 1828 on land purchased for $250.

THE CHURCH closed in 1917 and was remodeled into six apartments in 1924.

THE CITY claimed the rundown property for back taxes and sold it in 1998 to the Committee to Restore the Abyssinian for $250.

IT WAS LISTED on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006 and the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom in 2007.

TO LEARN MORE about the Abyssinian or to make a donation, visit www.abyme.org.

Coffee-colored timbers drifted slowly through the air, balanced at the end of crane straps, to a flatbed trailer waiting below.

For nearly two centuries, the hand-hewn beams shouldered the roof of the historic Abyssinian Meeting House in Portland's East End.

On Tuesday, workers carefully removed the beams, some more than 20 feet long, and started the most visible phase of a 10-year effort to restore a national landmark.

"I'm all lit up inside," said Leonard Cummings Sr., chairman of the Committee to Restore the Abyssinian. "We stayed the course through ups and downs and now it's really happening."

Built in 1828, the Abyssinian>>>