The Bartlett Roundhouse Preservation Society

An event took place a few days ago that really brought home how important it is for us to be doing what we are to restore and repurpose the roundhouse to become part of the historical heritage of New Hampshire.  The village of Hooksett New Hampshire has had an old road bridge spanning the Merrimack River for many of years.  Not too long ago, it was replaced with a more modern span that allowed better traffic movement through the village and the old bridge was retired.  It did get listed on the National Register of Historic Places, however, which should have been incentive to see that it survived for posterity.  Unfortunately, the structure gradually was allowed to degrade to the point where it had to be destroyed, thereby eliminating an integral piece of our New Hampshire historical narrative.  It was dropped to great fanfare a few days ago and is now being removed piecemeal from the river. What struck me most was that this was almost what was to happen to th...

Over the past few days a lot of photos have been taken of the work on the back of stalls one and two of the roundhouse. I also have photos, but they will be redundant with those already posted. Suffice to say that work is moving right along and much progress has been made. Cam Sargent, our Vice President advised that the walls have been partially sided now and that that effort should be done fairly quickly, now that the structural repairs and the new sheathing and moisture barrier are in place. Apparently, the upper walls were found to be floating and in need of connection to the structure and that has been done (we had previously had some work done on the bottom, but the top was inaccessible at that time). We are now looking at how this should be painted, once the siding is in place. The building was painted completely green at some point, but, according to our retired archivist, Scott Mallett, the walls were actually green only from the ground up to the bottom of the window sill...