Conservators Are Uncovering Elaborate Angel Murals Hidden Behind Seven Layers of White Paint at a Colonial-Era Church

Conservators are working to restore colorful angels painted nearly 300 years ago at Boston’s Old North Church, a historic house of worship made famous by Paul Revere.

Founded in 1723 in the North End neighborhood, the Old North Church is the oldest surviving church building in Boston. Its congregants were Anglicans, a minority compared to the many Puritans living in Boston during the colonial era.

Around the year 1730, church leaders hired a congregation member named John Gibbs to paint 16 angels on the interior upper arches. Gibbs also painted angels on the organ case and an altar panel, reports Episcopal News Service’s Tracy J. Sukraw.

“Everywhere you looked in the church, you would have seen angels,” Reverend Matthew Cadwell, the church’s vicar, tells Episcopal News Service. “It would have been so different from any Puritan church that you would have stepped foot in.”

For more than 180 years, the winged cherubs adorned the walls—until 1912, when church officials had them covered up with layers of thick white paint.

They stood guard while a 15-year-old named Paul Revere was tasked with ringing the church’s bells. Decades later, they were still there when Revere made his famous midnight ride to warn of the approaching British army.

On the evening of April 18, 1775, Revere learned that the British were heading from Boston to the nearby towns of Lexington and Concord. He contacted Robert Newman, the sexton of the Old North Church, and asked him to hang two lanterns from the building’s tower. This covert symbol was meant to communicate that the British were rowing across the Charles River, rather than marching on land.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow memorialized this moment in his 1860 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.” He mentioned the church by name and popularized the phrase “one if by land, and two if by sea.”

It’s not clear why the angels were painted over, but they’ve remained hidden for the past century.

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The church’s interior may have been painted white amid a “resurgence of this colonial revival aesthetic” during the early 20th century, says Lisa Howe, a director at Building Conservation Associates, a consulting firm hired to explore the church’s painted-over history, to the Boston Globe’s Julian E.J. Sorapuru.

“Painting everything white everywhere was an approach,” she adds. “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.”

Now, ahead of the 250th anniversary of Revere’s ride, conservators are bringing the angels back into the spotlight. Since September, they’ve focused their efforts on eight of the angels; they hope to restore the other eight by the spring, per the Boston Globe.

Historic Paint Restoration: Uncovering Hidden Angels

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The $465,000 project “allows our visitors to see a little bit of the church as Paul Revere would have known it,” says Nikki Stewart, executive director of Old North Illuminated, the nonprofit foundation that helps preserve the historic site, to WCVB-TV’s Brianna Borghi. “But also it really deepens the interpretations of the religious history of the church because, in that founding era, the church would have been very richly decorated.”

The restoration has been a slow and careful process, as the angels were covered by seven layers of paint, reports the Associated Press’ Michael Casey. Conservators applied solvent gel to soften the paint before carefully shaving away the layers using plastic scrapers. They then used cotton swabs to gently clean and retouch the underlying angels.

They were surprised to see that each figure has its “own character,” Gianfranco Pocobene, a conservator working on the project, tells the AP.

“They’re not copies,” Pocobene adds. “They’re all in different poses, which gives them a really wonderful rhythmic kind of pattern across the surface of the church.”

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.