Repairs have been made to one and two nearly 100 year-old stain glass domes on the Greene County Courthouse.
County Engineer Wade Weiss says they needed to make emergency repairs to the 157 square-foot stain glass dome on the courtroom after some debris had fallen from the dome following a storm on August 31st.
He states that gravity had pulled some of the stain glass panels from the supporting iron rod structure that was used to hold it up on top of the dome, allowing cracks and holes to be exposed. Weiss notes that most of the materials were original to when the courthouse was built in 1917 and the typical lifespan of those materials is 60-80 years.
The Stain Glass Store in Des Moines spent one month making repairs and Weiss describes the details of what was done.
“That dome has been cleaned, each piece individually was taken out (and) cleaned, re-leaded, and the structure behind the glass in order to hold it in place in the somewhat horizontal fashion has all been replaced. So, its sufficient now to last the next 100-years.”
The total cost of the repairs was $30,440, which was below the original estimate of $31,000.
Weiss says they will now focus on repairing the larger dome in the rotunda of the courthouse. He points out that the 346 square-foot stain glass dome isn’t in need of emergency repair, but it is the same age as the courtroom dome which means repairs can’t be put off.
The biggest obstacle for the larger dome is accessibility to it to make repairs.
Weiss says the next step in the process is to get bid documents out to contractors and then budget for the repairs in next fiscal year’s budget. The estimate amount for the second project is $175,000.
