Nearly 300 years ago, elaborate angel murals were painted at Boston’s Old North Church, which was made famous by Paul Revere. Now, conservators are working on the restoration of these colorful angels, as they were covered up in 1912.
The Old North Church was founded in 1723 in the North End neighborhood. It is the oldest church building still standing in Boston.
The people who attended the church were Anglicans. They were a minority compared to the Puritans who lived in the area during the colonial era.
In 1730, church leaders hired a congregation member named John Gibbs to paint 16 angels on the interior upper arches. Gibbs painted angels on an altar panel and the organ case as well.
“Everywhere you looked in the church, you would have seen angels,” said Reverend Matthew Cadwell, the church’s vicar. “It would have been so different from any Puritan church that you would have stepped foot in.”
The angels decorated the walls of the church for more than 180 years. Then, in 1912, church officials had them covered up with thick white paint.
The angels may have been hidden from view, but they still witnessed Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride decades later.
On the evening of April 18, 1775, Revere found out that the British army was on its way from Boston to Lexington and Concord.
He managed to contact Robert Newman, the sexton of the Old North Church at the time and asked him to hang two lanterns from the building’s tower. It was a message that meant the British were traveling across the Charles River rather than on land.
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In his 1860 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow mentioned the church’s name and memorialized the moment.
It is unclear why the angels were painted over, but they have remained invisible for the past 100 years. During the early 20th century, the inside of the church may have been painted white as part of a “colonial revival aesthetic.”
“Painting everything white everywhere was an approach,” said Lisa Howe, a director at the consulting firm Building Conservation Associates.
“And if you look at this church, it kind of has that colonial look. So, there’s the misperception that, ‘Oh, of course, it was always painted white.’ And that’s not the case.”
Since the fall, conservators have been slowly but surely uncovering the angels. So far, they’ve cleaned the paint off of eight angels and are hoping to restore the other eight by the spring.
The $465,000 project will allow visitors to see some of the church through Paul Revere’s eyes and enrich the history of the site. The angels were buried under seven layers of paint, so the restoration process has been painstakingly slow.
Solvent gel is applied to soften the paint, and then plastic scrapers are used to gently shave off the paint layers. Finally, cotton swabs are used to clean and touch up the angels.