The dome cost $214,000 and was completed in June of 2001.Tracing back to the 1800's we have the lineage in design and manufacture of high end ecclesiastical, municipal or domestic stained glass. Installation took little more than two weeks. With over 3 months spent just on artwork and design and an equal amount of time to cut the glass and build the panels. From planning and negotiations to the final installation, it took nearly a year to complete. Well over 6,000 pieces of hand-cut art glass leaded into 48 individual sections, using over one mile of lead came. It is suspended over 80 feet above the castle’s main hall, showering the recently finished Grand Staircase in brilliant hues of color. The dome itself measures 24 feet long by 18 feet wide and is over seven feet high. Once they arrived safely on Heart Island, each panel had to be hand carried up over 700 steps to the castle’s fourth floor, where the 48 sections were then re-assembled into the 16 pie-shaped sections of the framework that (when eased into place and held tight with solder and hand-hammered copper clips) would come together to create the brilliant stained-glass dome ceiling that is proudly hanging there now. Lawrence River to the bottom of Heart Island. When all the construction on the panels was done, the wooden molds then became the packing crates for their respective panels.Įach panel was trucked up to Wellesley Island, to the Boldt Family’s Yacht House, where they were ferried across the St. These 48 sections later provided a work surface on which that particular panel could be built.
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Once final designs were drawn up in the studio, they had to be transferred to wooden molds mock-ups of the dome’s 48 individual glass and lead panels. Designs had to be altered and redesigned (by myself) in order to get them to work in a three-dimensional situation. Sloan’s ideas into actual working patterns which could then be used to cut the colored, textured glass. Since the spring of 2000, Brennan Stained Glass Studio has worked as subcontractor to GEF Restoration of Port Leyden N.Y., the construction firm responsible for most of the island structures’ rehabilitation and restoration work. When bids opened last year Brennan’s bid was the lowest, coming in $20,000 lower than the next lowest bid.
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knew what they wanted, they still needed to put the job up for bid. In 1995 authority officials were at a point where they could seriously consider having the stained glass dome ceiling built, and so hired the Watertown architectural firm of Bernier, Carr & Associates to come up with a design.Īrchitect Rick Tague called on Boston conservator Julie Sloan, a nationally recognized expert in historic stained glass and a former Columbia University classmate, to imagine the dome that George Boldt might have built if he saw his dream realized, and then come up with a working stained glass design. While much of the money has gone into unseen but vital work, such as roof, foundation and structural repairs needed to save the buildings and make them safe for visitors – in more recent years money has gone to gardens, stonework, interior decoration and other projects more obvious to visitors. Unfinished framework originally intended to support a stained glass dome.