PLYMOUTH, MASS. (WHDH) - A local architect is helping to shape history — the Plymouth artisan played a pivotal role in helping restore the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris after much of it was destroyed in a fast-moving fire in 2019.
Michael Burrey, who teaches at the North Bennet School in Boston’s North End, said he and his students were shocked to see the devastation the fire caused to the historic landmark.
“When Notre Dame caught fire one of my students came into the bench room and said, ‘Notre Dame is burning,’ and we all tuned in on our phones and watched it it was very emotional in the bench room that day and we were all dismayed at that loss of history and knowledge and we were all asking what we could do to help out,” he recalled.
Burrey was one of a handful of Americans selected by the French government to help with the restoration, all thanks to the Handshouse Studio in Norwell.
Executive Director Marie Brown said, “Handshouse is an organization that creates hands-on learning projects with institutions and partners around the world to create projects that illuminate history, explore science, and perpetuate the arts in all kinds of ways.”
After the fire, the organization wanted to take action to show solidarity with the French people and recreated one of the wooden trusses, a hidden section under the cathedral’s roof where the fire originated.
A 1:10 scale model of the truss system is still at the Handhouse Studio.
In 2020, Burrey’s students traveled to Washington, D.C., where the helped construct the 8,000 pound truss. The structure was displayed at the National Mall and has since toured across the US.
The project caught the attention of the chief architect behind the restoration effort, who then invited Burrey to France, where he helped restore the cathedral’s century-old spire.
Handshouse says Burrey played a major role in making sure the restoration was historically accurate.
“The fact that they were able to go and get trees from within France, have materials that were extremely similar to what was already there means that the actual material in the object has place and has time and history in it,” Brown said.
Burrey said watching the cathedral reopen from his home in Plymouth was a profound moment.
“To see it finished up and to see it in gleaming white, it was essentially brand new, was very spectacular, very emotional,” he said, “and to see the artisans thanked by Macron was very special too because that doesn’t usually happen.”
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