Mending Wall

 Mike Willock writes: 

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” begins Robert Frost’s 1914 poem “Mending Wall.”
 
In front of Second Church is such a wall. Built of massive white limestone blocks that match the sanctuary construction, it rises near the Westminster Place sidewalk to enclose the plaza in front of the sanctuary entrance. It was part of the original 1899-1900 construction. You can see it in the 1906 photo below.

 
But, as Frost explains, water and winter frost are not friends to a wall. When I joined the session in 2007, I took the picture below, looking west along Westminster Place. You can see that parts of the wall near Niccolls Hall were leaning toward the sidewalk and threatening collapse. Over the years, rain and snow collected on the plaza, seeped through the plaza stones and saturated and softened the foundation of the wall. Then, hard winter freezes did their work, turning water in the foundation to ice, moving and tilting the wall toward the street. Robert Frost was right.

Session approved repairs, but it was our own John Puterbaugh whose civil and structural engineering skills designed the repairs and who supervised the reconstruction. Stones from the wall were carefully removed, marked and stored while the foundation of the wall was rebuilt, incorporating drainage pipes to direct any seepage to the flower planting between the sidewalk and the wall. Then the wall was rebuilt as before. The photo below show the wall this spring with the roses in bloom.

When you come to Second Church today you might never know the story of how our wall proved the truth of Robert Frost’s poem through the accumulating stresses of more than 100 years. But now we can add our own new ending to Frost’s poem: Someone there is who loves a wall. So, the next time you admire the view in front of the church along Westminster Place, think of John Puterbaugh. Thanks be to God for John’s engineering and construction talents, for his many gifts and for his long and faithful commitment to Second Church.

(Robert Frost's famous poem can be found here)