The remarkable restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral: Medieval tools, a stateside choir truss, and an improbable collaboration

Last Fall, intrigued by the project’s reliance on traditional techniques and materials, we reported on the ongoing restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral. A pair of massive oak trusses, made only with tools available in the 13th century, had just been lifted by crane onto the storied cathedral.

But the project was of additional interest to us because of its crossover with our friends at Handshouse Studio the nonprofit institute founded by Rick and Laura Brown.

Handshouse was expressly established to recreate large historical objects, for educational purposes. The Notre Dame restoration seemed ideally suited to a parallel project, so Handshouse chose to produce a full-scale replica of the cathedral’s choir truss, using only medieval techniques. The 8,100 lb., white-oak structure was workshopped in 2021 at Handshouse headquarters, in Norwell, MA. It was then raised on the National Mall in Washington D.C.; then in Atlanta; and then again in Adrian, Michigan. But the project’s crowning moment may have been a visit from the people in charge of the real thing: when the choir truss was exhibited in the National Building Museum in D.C., France’s Chief Architects of Historic Monuments, Philippe Villeneuve and Rémi Fromont, made it an occasion for their first U.S. lectures on the subject.

What followed was yet more remarkable.

Flashback to April of 2019. Just four days prior to the fire, the sixteen 11-foot-tall statues of apostles and evangelists which stood at the spire’s base were removed for restoration. And now, on account of his involvement with the Handshouse project, Cascade Joinery alumnus Jackson Dubois (along with Michael Burrey, Preservation Carpentry instructor at Boston’s North Bennet Street School) was invited to France to rebuild the steps where those statues will once again stand. The project unfolded over three months in the medieval town of Thouars, in the Loire Valley. Jackson, who got his start here in Bellingham, is now Executive Director of the Timber Framers Guild. “We did the delicate work, the fancy gothic tracery,” he says.”The first time I wrote down ‘Notre Dame de Paris’ on my timesheet, it was definitely pretty intense. Occasionally I would realize what I was working on and just stop in my tracks.”

A 3D point cloud maps fasteners in the lumber; The Machine at work

In the days following the fire at Notre Dame, the golden rooster which had perched atop its spire was rescued from the ashes, along with the religious relics it contained. This April, the newly completed spire was returned to its rightful place atop the cathedral, along with a new golden rooster—reimagined as a Phoenix to symbolize the cathedral’s rebirth—and a new time capsule to house those relics. Except a new object is now tucked in with the remains of St. Denis, St. Genevieve and purported pieces of Christ’s crown of thorns. It’s a scroll, inscribed with the names of Jackson Dubois and nearly 2,000 others who’ve worked on the project. “I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to digest that,” Jackson says.

Five years on from the fire, the restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral is expected to be completed as scheduled, by Christmas of this year.

Handshouse Studio

National Building Museum: Lecture, Philippe Villeneuve and Rémi Fromont

60 Minutes: “Reconstruction continues at the Cathedral of Notre Dame 4 years after fire”