The Episcopal church in the North End is well-known for the two lanterns that were hung from its steeple by church sexton Robert Newman to inform Paul Revere that the British military were advancing on Lexington and Concord by sea, not by land, preceding Revere's famous midnight ride. The angels would have been a familiar sight to Revere, who had a job ringing the church's bells as a teenager, when Old North was an Anglican church.
As we approach the 250th anniversary of the midnight ride in 2025 and of the United States in 2026, "This is giving us an opportunity to see a part of the church as Paul Revere saw it, and to have a more tangible connection with the past," said Nikki Stewart, executive director of Old North Illuminated, the nonprofit that operates the church's business arm.
A total of 16 angels, depicted as cherubs (beings with the face of a child and bird-like wings) adorn the church's interior upper arches. The current round of paint exposure will uncover the eight angels in the back half of the church and conclude in December to accommodate visitors for Christmas services. The second round is planned to start in mid-January and end in late March, when all 16 angels will be visible for the first time in more than a century.
John Gibbs, a congregant of Old North Church (then known as Christ Church), started painting the figures in 1727, before finishing sometime in the 1730s. It is possible that the angels are the artist's only surviving work, according to Gianfranco Pocobene, the lead paint conservator working to uncover the angels. Gibbs's murals remained prominent for nearly 200 years before they were whitewashed in 1912, along with the rest of the church's interior.
The early 20th century brought a "resurgence of this colonial revival aesthetic," said Lisa Howe, a director at Building Conservation Associates, or BCA, the building and art restoration consulting firm that revealed Old North Church's first angel. "I think painting everything white everywhere was an approach. 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."
Old North Illuminated first commissioned BCA to do a paint study of the church's walls in 2016, after staff reviewed documentation that referenced the building's decorative paint.
A paint study "is like an archeological excavation in miniature, where you can see every layer" of paint, said Laura Lacombe, an architectural conservator with BCA. The process involves taking a cross section of paint about the size of a fingernail from the wall, which a conservator then observes under a microscope.
Looking at the brush strokes up close, conservators confirmed the bottom layer of paint matched the colors from the historical record, said Howe. What they didn't know was what condition the angels would be in after three centuries, she said.
To find out, conservators removed the top layers of paint on one arch with chemical solvents to expose a single angel. That angel -- nicknamed "Howard" after the late Boston architect and Old North Illuminated board member, Howard Elkus -- was partially uncovered in 2017. Initially, conservators hypothesized that all the angels were copies of the original. But when they realized each angel was unique, Old North Illuminated tasked Pocobene's company with revealing all 16 angels.
"It was extraordinary that they found that first cherub," said Pocobene. "Now we're trying to do a large-scale uncovering."
A climb up the 30-foot metal scaffolding currently in the church reveals the finer details of the murals. Each angel has a distinctive hair style, wing pose, and facial expression. The angels are accentuated with dark paint, meant to mimic the effect of a shadow and give the cherubs a three-dimensional look from afar. The artist was likely attempting to imitate the stone sculptures of cherubs that were popular in European churches, said Pocobene.
At the time of reporting, six angels had been revealed after top coats of paint were painstakingly removed one Q-tip at a time by Pocobene and his team, who must remain careful not to damage the original paint. Next, they retouch the 300-year-old paint, carefully matching hues, brush techniques, and subtle details to the original, using modern paint that will be easy to remove for future conservation efforts. It's highly specialized work that will cost $465,000 at its conclusion, including the 2016 paint study, said Stewart.
"It's really expensive to do it right, and to do it in the way that the church deserves. We need other people to see this and get excited, and then want to see more, and want to support that philanthropically," said Stewart.
"This is a once-in-a-career project," added Howe.
Pocobene agreed. "Three-hundred years. I mean, in Europe, that's recent," he joked. "Here, it's like as old as you can get -- almost."