Meet the American Artisans Who Helped Resurrect Notre Dame
A group of American craftsmen are perhaps unlikely candidates to work on the restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral, the masterpiece of Gothic architecture in the heart of Paris that was reduced to a smoldering shell from a catastrophic fire in 2019. Because while the resurrection of this Gothic jewel is a nearly impossible realization of French President Emmanuel Macron’s five-year restoration pledge, it is also a testament to the continued artistry of some five dozen craftspeople who have kept ancient medieval skills alive in an age of modernized construction needs.
Among them are three artisans—Jackson Dubois, Michael Burrey, and Hank Silver—who were tapped by the French government to help resurrect this 860-year-old icon of architecture and French history. As the cathedral reopens its doors this Sunday after a massive nearly $1 billion restoration project, here’s an up-close look at how three American artisans were part of this rare moment in history.
Jackson Dubois from New York
Helped Construct: The Spire
Jackson Dubois is a timber framer who started out building custom timber framed homes in Washington state. He now resides just outside of Cooperstown, New York, where he finds satisfaction in carrying on the work of those who came before him. "My family were colonists in the New Paltz area," he tells ELLE DECOR. "It has been a pleasure to take part in saving the beautiful architecture of the Hudson Valley and Central New York."
But his interest in saving beautiful architecture didn't end in New York. Dubois has been a member of the Timber Framers Guild for 20 years and now serves as the executive director. He also joined Handshouse Studio, an educational organization based in Norwell, Massachusetts, through which he has been actively involved in many historic projects. One of his favorites? "I joined Handshouse Studio in reconstructing a 13th-century synagogue for the Museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw over 10 years ago," he recalls.
So when a team of Handshouse Studio volunteers decided to recreate a full scale build of Notre Dame truss number six, which had been destroyed in the fire in 2021, Dubois was on board. The effort, called the Handshouse Notre Dame project, caught the attention of the Notre Dame's principal architects, Philippe Villeneuve and Rémi Fromont, who came to Washington D.C. to see it for themselves. "From this wonderful exchange, an invitation was extended for two American timber Framers to apply to take part in the reconstruction work with the French company Asselin I the Loire Valley," Dubois explains. He was one of the two. "It was a long process of submitting portfolios, [resumes], and applications for work visas."
Dubois joined a team of 18 carpenters called "companions of duty" for Asselin, a family-owned company that specializes in restoring historical monuments. They are one of the four companies that worked to rebuild the Notre Dame spire. The team spent three months in Thouars, a medieval town in western France, assembling and carving the wooden stapes at the base of the spire.
"I helped reconstruct the gothic elements of the spire, the quatrefoils, trefoils, peaked gables and balustrades," Dubois explains. "It was a mix of power tools and hand carving working with French Oak that was entering the workshop with the bark still intact and exiting ready for installation in the cathedral."
Language barriers aside (Dubois speaks little French), Dubois says the biggest challenge was working alongside craftspeople who don't know your skill set. "It really required that you prove yourself in this very high stakes way and lean into the universal language of woodworking and timber framing specifically," he adds.
For Dubois, the project gave him pause to reflect on his own ancestry, which has French roots. "The French side of my family were Huguenots who emigrated from northern France in the mid 1600's due to religious persecution," he explains. "The fact that I could now, almost 400 years later, take part in this effort, connect with the people, tools and materials, and celebrate it as a cherished international monument was very satisfying."
Dubois says he's flying back to Paris this week to see the reopening ceremonies. "It will be very emotional," he adds. "It's incredibly humbling, and it's been an honor to lead an organization with so many highly skilled and caring craftspeople."
Michael Burrey from Boston
Helped Construct: The Spire
Michael Burrey can trace his lifelong love of architectural craftsmanship back to a book he found at age 13. " I purchased a book, American Barns and Covered Bridges by Eric Sloane, which influenced me to pursue traditional ways of working with wood, clay, brick and stone." The rest is history, seeing him through the discovery of hand tools and traditional techniques in high school and a study of early American life in college.
Burrey spent more than a decade working as an interpretive artisan for Plimoth Plantation, now Plymouth Patuxet Museum, in Plymouth Massachusetts. There, he worked to build a village as accurate as possible to the year 1627, the seventh year after the Mayflower's arrival. "I built the palisade, fences, gates, houses and thatching roofs," he explains. "Everything was done by hand with tools and costuming appropriate to the period."
Further interested in learning from and reproducing ancient technologies, Burrey is a 25-year-old member of Handshouse Studio and teaches the second year of the Preservation Carpentry program at North Bennett Street School in Boston—and that's how Burrey got involved, joining the Handshouse Notre Dame project.
"In the summer of 2021 my students and I were invited to participate along with about 35 other traditional carpenters from the Timber Framers guild of North America in the project," he explains. That's when Burrey was selected to join Dubois to build the real thing.
"I have always been interested in carving decorative architectural elements of the Medieval Period," Burrey adds. "So I specialized in carving and blending in the various blocks of French Oak that formed the quatrefoils, trefoils, dormers, and railings of the spire." The job wasn't without its difficulties (Burrey was basically learning French as he went), but well worth the effort, he says.
For Burrey, this project is personal in more ways than one, as the opportunity allowed him, too, to tap into his French roots. "In a sense we were just coming back home again," he says. For him, watching its reopening this week feels like a full-circle moment. "We toured the cathedral in July 2023 when it was full of scaffolding and work was progressing," he says. "It is quite emotional seeing the completed project and knowing our work will be a part of that spire for hundreds of years."
Hank Silver from Massachusetts
Helped Construct: The Nave
Born in New York City, American-Canadian timber framer Hank Silver had never even heard of a nave before this last year. He first learned to build barns and house frames in Vermont. He went on to establish his own timber frame workshop, Ironwood Timberworks, in western Massachusetts. His connection to France, however, began when in 2018, Silver joined Carpenters Without Borders, a France-based volunteer crew focused on restoring world carpentry heritage and passing these skills and techniques on to future generations of craftspeople. He couldn’t have imagined his involvement there would incite an invitation in January 2023 to join a team in Normandy preparing timber to rebuild the nave of the Notre-Dame Cathedral.
He, of course, leapt at the opportunity. “It’s the kind of chance that comes once in a lifetime—once in a millennium, rather!” Silver tells ELLE DECOR.
As lead carpenter, Silver’s work began with 600 oak logs, from which the crew hewed around 1,100 beams using medieval-patterned axes. “We then laid out and cut the wooden joinery for the truss work, and the entire frame of the nave was test-fitted in Normandy before being dismantled and shipped to Paris,” he explains. Silver later oversaw the assembly and installation of the frame on-site at Notre-Dame. After completing the nave in March 2024, he continued his work on the cathedral, installing the oak roof deck on both the nave and the south transept.
Precisely recreating a church that has stood for 800 years presents a specific set of challenges—specifically, the architects tasked the crew with reproducing all of the deformations that had accumulated over eight centuries. “The ridge is not a straight line, requiring the team to follow its curvature; Although the walls were rebuilt by masons, they are still not level or straight,” Silver explains. “These imperfections have led to numerous complexities that the original carpenters in the 13th century never would have encountered.”
While Silver has strong American roots, he still feels connected to the project, noting that the U.S. has a built tradition that’s much newer, but that is derived from these European methods. “For someone like me, being able to work on this building, which is the birthplace of this technique, is particularly meaningful,” he says. “When I look at Notre-Dame, I will be able to say, ‘I built that.’”
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