By Jack DeGange
Photography by Richard Frutchey

Visualize an oblong commemorative postage stamp:From serrated edge to edge, the stamp’s dimensions are one-and-nine-sixteenths inch by one inch.

The stamp’s image occupies all but a spare white border that’s about one-sixteenth inch all around.

Now, consider the new footprint of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, a landmark on West Wheelock Street in Hanover since 1852. Only an aerial view can easily reveal the addition, tucked neatly between the church and neighboring buildings. What’s within, however, gives St. Thomas an investment that will serve the congregation for many years.

Save for the landscaped front lawn that faces the street, the building, with its new addition, sits within inches of property lines shared, to the north, with Thayer Hall, where many Dartmouth College students take their meals, and two College fraternities to the east and west.

There’s a blue tag pinned near the base of a stately hemlock that belongs to Theta Delta Chi, the fraternity to the west. It’s a boundary mark in one of the tree’s main stems that now scrapes the canopy over the church’s original handicapped access ramp. The walls of Thayer Hall and Psi Upsilon (the other fraternity) are barely nine feet from the walls of the church.

Get the picture? It’s a postage stamp piece of property in downtown Hanover. There’s no wasted space.

For Trumbull-Nelson, the project presented unusual challenges: to provide construction services for an expansion and renovation project that uses every inch of available property—without impeding the normal activity of neighbors, pedestrians and vehicular traffic.

During the past ten months, Trumbull-Nelson has delivered. “I’ve worked with site restrictions before but nothing like this,” said Paul Tremblay, T-N’s project superintendent.

For decades, the property lines were incidental to a greater issue: St. Thomas Church has dealt with limited interior space that impeded its ability to serve a congregation of a few hundred families.

“We began about five years ago with a discernment process that involved the entire parish,” said Jerry Mitchell, the church treasurer and a member of the project committee that included Bill Bittinger, Jim Hemphill and Steve Wheelock, a threesome with extensive construction experience.

“Our goal is to satisfy religious education needs, provide handicapped access throughout the church, and support the church’s outreach program to families throughout the area.”

This required demolition of Milham House, a small, attached frame structure that housed church offices for about 50 years, and replacing it with an addition that runs the length of the church adjacent to Thayer Hall, providing about 8,000 square feet of new space distributed over two-plus floors.

Add to this the renovation of about 5,000 square feet of existing space including the chancel (the altar and choir area) and the entire lower level. Another requirement: bring the original building into code compliance including a full sprinkler system—now virtually invisible among the stained beams of the sanctuary roof.

Integrating old and new presented design challenges for architect Rick Monahon of Peterborough, N.H., assisted by Andrew Garthwaite, an Upper Valley architect and a member of the St. Thomas parish.

Executing the plan fell to Trumbull-Nelson, the Construction Manager for the $1.6 million project, and a corps of subcontractors.

Among the most imposing challenges for Paul Tremblay’s team: remove sections of the 150-year-old granite foundation and exterior walls and provide access to the addition on both the main and lower levels. One of the old church’s features uncovered in the process: a small chamber outside the foundation, believed to be an air source for the bellows of an early church organ.

Another requirement: bring the original building into code compliance including a full sprinkler system—now virtually invisible among the stained beams of the sanctuary roof.

What made this project especially difficult for T-N was access to the expansion area, tucked between the church, Thayer Hall and Psi Upsilon’s house. Tremblay described it as a sequential process, beginning at the farthest point from a single vehicle access area to Wheelock Street. “We had to demolish, excavate and pour concrete, section by section, to create the foundation,” he said.

It was an arduous process, begun in last winter’s bitter cold that included extending the long arms of concrete pumps and a special crane over the ridge of the church roof to reach the work area.

One of the Town of Hanover’s requirements: no excessive dirt from truck wheels on West Wheelock Street, one of the town’s busiest roads. The solution: a temporary gravel driveway, now replaced with lawn, shrubs and a curving walkway that reaches the entrance to St. Thomas Hall, a spacious new gathering room that is a feature of the expansion area.

The lower level of the addition includes five brightly colored rooms (one is a nursery), new areas for youth and adult education programs and meetings. The lower level of the original church has been completely renovated to create a small chapel, offices for the music and education directors, and rehearsal areas for the church choir.

On the main level, St. Thomas Hall (with its cathedral ceiling and timber framework) has an adjacent full kitchen and can serve over 100 people. One side of the hall is the church’s original granite exterior that has been cut to provide wide, direct access to the sanctuary. Church offices are on the main level and a partial second floor of the addition.
An elevator serving all floors provides, for the first time, full handicapped accessibility.

The chancel floor has been rebuilt to a single, elevated level, improving access for the celebrants and choir, and the original granite altar will provide an historic backdrop. A new Rodgers digital pipe organ, now located in the chancel, has replaced the Wolff organ that was at the opposite end of the sanctuary. This reveals the historic stain glass window on the west wall.

The sanctuary has been completely repainted and all pews restored. And, the entire facility is air conditioned.

During the past year as work progressed, the St. Thomas parish held services in Rollins Chapel on the Dartmouth campus. They returned home on October 12 to a church that retains its classic beauty and an addition that provides a harmony of new and old, resources designed for greater service.

It’s been a year of difficult, creative, gratifying work for Trumbull-Nelson’s team. “They did a fantastic job,” said Jerry Mitchell. Added The Reverend Canon Henry Atkins, interim priest at St. Thomas, with a broad smile, “I can’t speak too highly of the work they’ve done for our church.”